Attenuation estimation in high frequency surface seismic data with application for seismic reservoir characterization

Recent advances in seismic data acquisition technology enable the recording of higher frequencies and higher S/N seismic data. In many cases surface seismic and VSP data span similar bandwidths. When dealing with such high frequency data one must take into account the effect of attenuation on the seismic wave. In this paper we present an algorithm for estimating attenuation, and show its applications to reservoir characterization. We present methods for attenuation estimation using wavelet transform of seismic data and constrained optimization algorithm. The applications discussed include compensating true amplitude recovery for AVO studies and adding additional constrains to saturation estimation from surface seismic data.