Interpretation software applied to the evaluation of shallow seismic data processing routines in fluvial deposits

Abstract High-resolution seismic surveys have been successfully applied in the study of active sedimentary environments in shallow submerged settings, particularly improving the interpretation of sedimentary facies and architectural elements that characterize fluvial rock records. Nevertheless, specific data processing workflows to emphasize sedimentary structures have not been proposed or tested, so that interpretation currently relies on the subjective opinion of individual interpreters, which might lead to biased conclusions. Aiming at the construction of a less biased data processing workflow, we developed a software that analyzes seismic data and performs standardized interpretation by linking individual seismic traces to generate interpreted reflector lines. A dataset acquired with boomer continuous seismic profiler in the sedimentary bed of the Amazonas river in Brazil was processed with a typical sequence of filter and gain (using Seismic UNIX software), as well as a routine of trace interpolation written in GNU Octave. The application of the Standardized Interpreter at different stages of processing enabled the comparison of the resulting interpretation scenarios in terms of the representation of geometries related to internal sedimentary structures, thus leading to the proposition of a workflow adapted to the specific needs of sedimentary structure interpretation from seismic data.