Advances in Land Multicomponent Seismic : Acquisition , Processing and Interpretation

Land multicomponent seismic has garnered significant attention and demonstrated substantial growth in the last five years. The bulk of this growth in multicomponent activity has been in western Canada. While multicomponent seismic has been around for many years, historical cost and quality concerns have limited its use as a routine exploration tool. The current resurgence of multicomponent seismic on land is a result of acquisition advances, specifically the development of digital multicomponent sensors (Micro Electro Mechanical System, or MEMS) and processing developments including statics, noise attenuation advances such as polarization filters and prestack migration. One remaining difficulty to be overcome is in the interpretation – or perhaps the interpreter’s misconceptions of multicomponent data.