Seismic Coherence for Discontinuity Interpretation

Seismic coherence is of the essence for seismic interpretation as it highlights seismic discontinuity features caused by the deposition process, reservoir boundaries, tectonic movements, etc. Since its appearance in 1995, seismic coherence has become one of the most popular and highly recognized interpretation tools. In the last 25 years, there have been different kinds of approaches to calculate seismic coherence attributes, such as cross-correlation, semblance, and eigen-structure. We have also seen different coherence enhancement techniques and modified ways for coherence calculation to address different problems in diverse field applications. In this survey, we provide a general overview of seismic coherence, which is commonly used to delineate structural and stratigraphic discontinuities. We cover the development of the seismic coherence attributes via introducing existing approaches for coherence calculation, enhancement, spectral band-limited coherence methods, and offset-/azimuth-limited coherence methods. In addition, we also discuss the possible coherence artifacts and pitfalls. To better compare different techniques, field applications are provided, where different disciplinary coherence attributes with enhancement techniques are calculated for the channel, fault, carbonate karst, and volcano interpretation.