Surface wave attenuation in the shallow subsurface from multichannel-multishot seismic data: a new approach for detecting fractures and lithological discontinuities

Surface wave analysis generally neglects amplitude information, instead using phase information to delineate near-surface S-wave velocity structures. To effectively characterize subsurface heterogeneities from amplitude information, we propose a method of estimating lateral variation of attenuation coefficients of surface waves from multichannel-multishot (multifold) seismic data. We extend the concept of the common midpoint cross-correlation method, used for phase velocity estimation, to the analysis of attenuation coefficients. Our numerical experiments demonstrated that when used together, attenuation coefficients and phase velocities could characterize a lithological boundary as well as fracture zone. We applied the proposed method to multifold seismic reflection data acquired in Shikoku Island, Japan. We clearly observed abrupt changes in lateral variation of estimated attenuation coefficients around fault locations associated with a lithological boundary and with well-developed fractures, whereas phase velocity results could detect only the lithological boundary. Our study demonstrated that simultaneous interpretation of attenuation coefficients and phase velocities has the potential to distinguish localized fractures from lithological boundaries.