Harsh imaging techniques for shallow high resolution seismic data

David C. Henley

There is increasing interest in the use of high resolution seismic methods to image the shallowest layers of the earth in pursuit of various objectives, including bedrock features, buried cultural structures such as pipelines, and even paleontological or archaeological anomalies. Often the surveys are carried out with some difficulty under non-ideal conditions, and the resulting data may be quite poor in quality and sparse in fold or coverage. Described here are the results of applying a number of unconventional and rather iaharshlt techniques to image two components of a 3-C seismic survey carried out in the vicinity of archaeological ruins in Belize during the summer of 2000 with the objective of locating subsurface disturbances consistent with various interesting archaeological features. While ambiguities remain in the identification of the 3-C components, images are presented for both 'vertical' and 'inline' components of the survey, which seem to show similar features at roughly coincident locations on the line.