A simple method of correction for profile-length water-column height variations in high-resolution, shallow-water seismic data

Abstract

In high-resolution, shallow-water seismic surveys, correction for water-column height variations caused by tides, weather, and currents is an important part of data processing. In this study, we present a very simple method of correction for profile-length (i.e., long-wavelength) water-column height variations for high-resolution seismic data using a reference bathymetric grid. First, the difference between the depth of the seafloor picked from seismic data and the bathymetry from the bathymetric grid is computed at the locations where the shot points of seismic profiles and the bathymetric grid points are collocated or closest. Then, the results are gridded and smoothed to obtain the profile-length water-column height variations for the survey area. Next, the water-column height variations for each seismic profile are extracted from the smoothed grid and converted to two-way traveltimes. The corrections for the remaining mis-ties at the intersections, computed within a circular region around each tie shot point, are added to the corrections for the water-column height variations. The final, mistie corrected water-column height corrections are loaded to the SEGY trace header of seismic data as a total static. We applied this method to the sparker data acquired from the shallow-water area off the western-central part of Korea where the tidal range is over 7 m. The corrections for water-column height variations range from -10 to 4 m with a median value of about -2 m. Large corrections occur locally between and near the islands probably due to the amplification and shortening in tidal wavelength caused by rapid shoaling toward the islands.