Suppression of the acquisition footprint for seismic sequence attribute mapping

Seismic coherency has proven to be very effective in delineating geologic faults as well as considerably more subtle stratigraphic features, including channels, canyons, slumps, levees, glacial gouges, dewatering patterns and pinnacle reefs. Unfortunately, seismic coherency estimates, which quantitatively measure the similarity or dissimilarity of adjacent traces in 3-D, are particularly sensitive to coherent noise that passes through the acquisition and processing flow. They are also sensitive to dissimilarities in fold, offset, and azimuth distribution introduced through the 3-D acquisition and binning processes. Edge enhancement algorithms further exacerbate these linear artifacts. We define the acquisition footprint to be any pattern of noise that is highly correlated to the geometric distribution of sources and receivers on the earth’s surface. While the strong acquisition footprints such as those caused by normal moveout (NMO) stretch on vintage single‐fold data have been largely ameliorated by mode...