Seismic SH Full Waveform Inversion: A tool for high-resolution near-surface characterization

Summary In recent years, Seismic Full Waveform Inversion (FWI) has been established as a high-resolution prospection method. Since 2014, the Applied Geophysics working group at Christian-Albrechts-University Kiel applied FWI to seismic SH data with different degrees of complexity for near-surface characterization tasks related to archaeological prospection and engineering geophysics. In this talk, we will review three of our field data applications which demonstrate the potential of FWI to resolve near-surface structures. The close collaboration with archaeologists allowed the unique opportunity to compare FWI results with the true subsurface structures. In the first example, SH-FWI is applied to field data from a transect over a medieval canal structure in southern Germany. The FWI is able to resolve the definition of the canal shape and small-scale structures within the canal. Significant surface topography poses another challenge for FWI. An example with significant surface topography is the Danewerk fortification wall in northern Germany. In this case, the FWI is able to resolve structures related to the construction history of the Danewerk. Finally, we applied a 2D SH-FWI workflow to resolve a partially collapsed excavation tunnel embedded deep inside a burial mound in Pergamon (Turkey).