Full Waveform Inversion in Viscoelastic Media

Abstract

Accumulations of gas hydrates in the bottom layers pose not only a potential threat to offshore engineering structures and shipping. They can also cause the release of significant volumes of methane into the atmosphere. The most natural way to detect gas hydrates is to use seismic methods. The technology of their application on the shelf is quite well developed, and there is a wide range of instrumental and methodological solutions that ensure their practical use. Detecting gas hydrates belongs to the class of multi-parameter inverse problems. Indeed, gas hydrates in the surrounding medium lead to a change in the propagation velocity of seismic waves and an increased level of wave absorption in these areas. Thus, the correct localization of the gas hydrate accumulations requires determining those regions in space where both the propagation velocities of seismic waves and quality factor change simultaneously. This work deals with the study of the trade-off in velocities and the quality factor of seismic waves. Namely, which condition we need to separate these two parameters’ perturbations by solving the dynamic inverse problem of seismic wave propagation.