Multicomponent seismic polarization analysis

Saúl Ernesto Guevara, Robert R. Stewart

In the 3-C seismic method, the plant orientation and polarity of geophones should be previously known to provide correct amplitude information. In principle the linear polarization of waves can be used to determine the direction of the geophones and in that way field errors in location can be corrected. In this work, polarization information of two 3-C data set is analyzed with that purpose. The data are from a 3C-3D geophone directivity experiment and from a 3C-2D high-resolution data set. Two parameters were used to analyze polarization: the azimuth of horizontal receivers and the linearity. In the 3-D case, a first break window was used. In the 2-D case, first breaks and a second event were analyzed. For the first breaks, a relationship was found between polarization and direction source-to-receiver, but it is affected by many factors and the directional information cannot be inferred accurately from it. Effects like difference in response with the direction of the geophone were observed. The second event analyzed for the 2-D data, interpreted as an S refraction, presents much more definite linear polarization.