Information on elastic parameters obtained from the amplitudes of reflected waves

Abstract

Seismic amplitude variation with offset data contain information on the elastic parameters of geological layers. As the general solution of the inverse problem consists of a probability over the space of all possible earth models, we look at the probabilities obtained using amplitude variation with offset (AVO) data for different choices of elastic parameters. A proper analysis of the information in the data requires a nontrivial definition of the probability defining the state of total ignorance on different elastic parameters (seismic velocities, Lamé’s parameters, etc.). We conclude that mass density, seismic impedance, and Poisson’s ratio constitute the best resolved parameter set when inverting seismic amplitude variation with offset data.