EEPS Colloquium: Eileen Martin

What happens when seismic fieldwork gets easy?

Fieldwork is almost never easy. However, new seismic sensors and data processing techniques are helping geophysicists have more options to make their fieldwork easier... if they're willing to make some sacrifices trading off data quality for data quantity. As some fieldwork becomes easier and lower cost, it's tough to resist the temptation to collect massive datasets, particularly for those of us studying fine-scale processes across large regions. This includes applications such as permafrost monitoring and geotechnical infrastructure studies, which have historically been approached with modest data volumes and limited computational resources. We'll look at a couple of new algorithms seeking to enable larger seismic data exploration and analysis with limited data transfer or computing resources. These algorithms require that we accept some additional uncertainty in our results, but we have tools to study these uncertainties. By using these kinds of algorithms, we can better understand our data while we're still in the field (especially in remote areas), and we should be able to reduce the cost and time needed to share seismic data with other geoscientists. 

Host: Roger Michaelides