Traditionally, land-seismic data acquisition is conducted using vertical-component sensors. A more complete representation of the seismic wavefield can be obtained by employing multicomponent sensors recording the full vector wavefield. If groups of multicomponent sensors are deployed, then spatial seismic wavefield gradients and rotational rates can be estimated by differencing the outputs of closely spaced sensors. Such data capture all six degrees of freedom of a rigid body (three components of translation and three components of rotation), and hence allow an even more complete representation of the seismic wavefield compared to single station triaxial data. Seismic gradient and rotation data open up new possibilities to process land-seismic data. Potential benefits and applications of wavefield gradient data include local slowness estimation, improved arrival identification, wavefield separation and noise suppression.