Advances in passive seismic analysis of sediment structure and applications in some typical basins

Abstract

Accurate constraints on sediment structure are of great importance for investigation and exploration of oil and gas resources, evaluation of site response, and imaging of deep crust and mantle structure. With the advance of seismic observation and the accumulation of large data from portable arrays, seismological methods using passive source to resolve sediment structures with high resolution have developed. In this paper, we review the advances in the seismological analyses and their basic principles, including receiver functions, transfer functions, H-β technique based on wavefield downward continuation, and P-wave particle motion using teleseismic data. Waveform fitting with high frequency is usually used for sediment structure constraints from local earthquakes. In addition, we also briefly review the analyses of spectral ratio, ambient noise tomography, Rayleigh wave Z/H amplitude ratio, and their joint inversion. Finally, we summarize the progress of research work on the structure of the shallow crust beneath the Songliao and North China basins based on these methods.

Keywords

• sediment structure
• receiver function
• h-β technique
• p-wave particle motion
• ambient noise tomography
• rayleigh wave z/h ratio
• spectral ratio