Back to results

University of Houston

An Investigation of Seismic Reflectivity Spectra, Moments, and Fractal Dimensions

Abstract

dc:description.abstract

Statistical models for seismic reflectivity spectra provide means of generating numerical reflection sequences as a priori information for seismic inversion, to test geophysical data processing techniques, and to parameterize real reflection sequences for classification purposes. I tested the effectiveness of using parametric and non-parametric statistical methods to estimate optimized reflectivity spectra and to identify the accurate form of the reflectivity distribution of seismic and well log data that best simulates observations. I show that a sum of generalized Gaussian distributions with variable mean, variance, skewness, and kurtosis characterizes measured distributions well. Reflectivity series distributions derived from sonic and density logs in 180 wells from 8 basins worldwide at forty sampling intervals between 0.1 milliseconds and 4 milliseconds show that the reflectivity exhibits a range of spectral shapes, from white to blue. The variation is strongly dependent on the sampling rate which has a remarkable effect on the shape of reflectivity distributions, spectra, and designed deconvolution filters. The sample rate dependence of spectral shape and the earth impulse response is greatly affected by internal multiples and transmission losses. Reflectivity moments and spectra vary with digital sampling interval and thus do not characterize a continuous earth well. I develop a novel technique whereby moments and spectral parameters are extrapolated to zero sample rate.

Degree

thesis:*
Name thesis:degree_name
Doctor of Philosophy
Level thesis:degree_level
Doctoral
Discipline thesis:degree_discipline
Geophysics
Grantor
University of Houston
Year dc:date.issued
2021

Author and committee

dc:creator, dc:contributor.*
Author dc:creator
  • Amirzadeh, Maria
Advisor dc:contributor.advisor
  • Castagna, John P.
Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember
  • Chesnokov, Evgeni M.
  • Ebrom, Daniel A.
  • Wang, Guoquan

Subjects

dc:subject × 1

Rights

dc:rights
Statement dc:rights
  • The author of this work is the copyright owner. UH Libraries and the Texas Digital Library have their permission to store and provide access to this work. Further transmission, reproduction, or presentation of this work is prohibited except with permission of the author(s).
Language dc:language.iso
eng

Identifiers

dc:identifier.*
Handle dc:identifier.uri
https://hdl.handle.net/10657/9322
OAI identifier oai:identifier
oai:uh-ir.tdl.org:10657/9322

Chain of custody

source
Harvested from
University of Houston
Base URL
uh-ir.tdl.org/server/oai/request
Last updated
2026-07-24
Source record
OAI-PMH GetRecord
citation

Amirzadeh, Maria. An Investigation of Seismic Reflectivity Spectra, Moments, and Fractal Dimensions. Doctoral thesis, University of Houston, 2021. https://hdl.handle.net/10657/9322