Seismic Refraction Studies on the Acoustic Basement in the Continental Shelf of the East Sea, Korea

摘要

Critically refracted seismic waves can be utilized in elucidation of physical properties of a high-impedance acoustic basement, where reflection methods are not effective in general. Quality factor Q was estimated for the high-impedance acoustic basement in the continental shelf of the East Sea, Korea. Various pre-processing steps for the estimation included static correction for gun delay, geometric correction, data interpolation, and Fourier transform. Based on the constant Q model, quality factor was computed for the upper-most layer within the basement using the spectral-ratio method. The computation gives values between 10.4 and 13.6, which fall under the range for water-saturated clastic sedimentary rocks. Using seismic events refracted from the layer boundaries within the acoustic basement in the study area, sedimentary layers were successfully defined. A short window AGC (automatic gain control) is an effective tool to reveal existence of the refraction boundaries. Based on a model for horizontal layers, refraction velocity and thickness were computed for each layer under a short seismic line of 3.75 km long in the continental shelf. From four distinct linear events, three layers were interpreted under the water body of 150 m deep. The computed thickness is 275 m for the top layer and 200 m for the middle one. The corresponding refraction velocities are approximately 3900 m/s and 5100 m/s, respectively. The refraction event from the top of the lowest layer suggests that its phase velocity is greater than 6400 m/s.