Reflection Profiles Extracted From Ambient-Noise Using Seismic Interferometry

Seismic Interferometry (SI) is the process of generating seismic traces from the crosscorrelation of existing traces. One application of SI is the retrieval of surface-wave arrivals between two passive stations at the Earth’s surface from the crosscorrelation of ambient noise. Another application is the retrieval of body-wave reflections from the crosscorrelation of ambient noise recorded at the Earth's surface. Retrieved reflections would afford the construction of subsurface velocity models and subsurface reflection images with higher resolution than provided by surface-wave tomography. So far the extraction of body-wave reflections has proven to be more challenging. Several factors contribute to this difficulty: e.g., the difference in geometrical spreading between body and surface waves and the reliance on a random distribution of noise sources in the subsurface, as opposed to the ubiquitous and well-studied surface noise.