Seismic Exploration of the Deep Continental Crust

DEKORP, the German continental reflection seismic program, was the major focus of deep seismic research in Germany in the 1980s and 1990s. The seismic sections provided fundamental new insight into deep geological structure of the European continent and the dynamics of continental formation. They formed the basis for worldwide comparative studies of orogenic structure. The complicated signature of the reflections from the deep crust indicated that new processing and interpretation techniques must be considered to better image the crystalline crust. Results of these efforts, including pre-stack migration, 3-D imaging, shear waves and seismic anisotropy, are presented in this special volume. In part, the articles open the perspective to new and future research. In part, they document research activity triggered by technical and interpretational questions raised by DEKORP field work and profiling results. Many of the presented methods can find immediate application in industrial seismic prospecting.

Reprint from Pure and Applied Geophysics (PAGEOPH), Volume 156 (1999), No. 1/2

Foreword: Seismic Exploration of the Deep Continental Crust.- Nature of Crustal Reflectivity along the DEKORP Profiles in Germany in Comparison with Reflection Patterns from Different Tectonic Units Worldwide: A Review.- Scales of Heterogeneities in the Continental Crust and Upper Mantle.- Seismic, Structural and Petrological Models of the Subcrustal Lithosphere in Southern Germany: A Quantitative Revaluation.- Seismic Shear Waves in Deep Seismic Reflection Surveys: Some Notes on Problems and Profits.- Seismic Velocities and Anisotropy of the Lower Continental Crust: A Review.- Recovering Shear-wave Anisotropy of the Lower Crust: The Influence of Systematic Errors on Travel-time Inversion.- Realistic Models of Anisotropic Laminated Lower Crust.- 3-D Prestack Kirchhoff Migration of the ISO89-3D Data Set.- 3-D Prestack-migration of Wide-angle Data from a Variscan Transition Zone.- Focusing in Prestack Isochrone Migration Using Instantaneous Slowness Information.- An Attempt to Integrate Reflection Seismics and Balanced Profiles.- Incorporation of the Effects of Absorption into Kirchhoff Migration.- Enhancement of Deep Seismic Reflections in Pre-stack Data by Adaptive Filtering.- Estimation of Seismic Velocities from Deep Reflections in the ?-p Domain.- The Use of Wave-field Directivity for Velocity Estimation: Moving Source Profiling (MSP) Experiments at KTB.- Elimination of Noise Caused by Spikes and Bursts in Vibroseis Data.- How to Remedy Non-optimal Seismic Data by Seismic Processing.

Reprint from Pure and Applied Geophysics (PAGEOPH), Volume 156 (1999), No. 1/2