NONLINEAR AVO INVERSION FOR A STACK OF ANELASTIC LAYERS

Parameters in a stack of homogeneous anelastic layers are estimated from seismic data, using the amplitude versus offset (AVO) variations and the travel-times. The unknown parameters in each layer are the layer thickness, the P-wave velocity, the S-wave velocity, the density and the quality factor. Dynamic ray tracing is used to solve the forward problem. Multiple reflections are included, but wave-mode conversions are not considered. The S-wave velocities are estimated from the PP reflection and transmission coefficients. The inverse problem is solved using a stabilized least-squares procedure. The Gauss-Newton approximation to the Hessian matrix is used, and the derivatives of the dynamic ray-tracing equation are calculated analytically for each iteration. A conventional velocity analysis, the common mid-point (CMP) stack and a set of CMP gathers are used to identify the number of layers and to establish initial estimates for the P-wave velocities and the layer thicknesses. The inversion is carried out globally for all parameters simultaneously or by a stepwise approach where a smaller number of parameters is considered in each step. We discuss several practical problems related to inversion of real data. The performance of the algorithm is tested on one synthetic and two real data sets. For the real data inversion, we explained up to 90% of the energy in the data. However, the reliability of the parameter estimates must at this stage be considered as uncertain.