A modified reconstruction algorithm for Fresnel volume tomography
Grandjean and Sage (2004) have presented a 2D seismic tomography software for estimating the velocity field using the first arrival traveltimes in paper ‘‘JaTS: A fully portable seismic tomography algorithm based on Fresnel wavepaths and a probabilistic reconstruction approach’’, Computers & Geosciences 30 (2004) 925–935. Unfortunately, the reconstruction algorithm includes errors in the paper. I correct the errors and present a modified reconstruction algorithm for Fresnel volume tomography.
A layer-stripping method for 3D near-surface velocity model building using seismic first-arrival times
In order to improve the efficiency of 3D near-surface velocity model building, we develop a layer-stripping method using seismic first-arrival times. The velocity model within a Common Mid-Point (CMP) gather is assumed to be stratified into thin layers, and the velocity of each layer varies linearly with depth. The thickness and velocity of the top layer are estimated using minimum-offset first-arrival data in a CMP gather. Then the top layer is stripped and the second layer becomes a new top layer. After removing the effect of the top layer from the former first-arrival data, the new first-arrival data are obtained and then used to estimate the parameters of the second layer. In this manner, the velocity model, being regarded as that at a CMP location, is built layer-by-layer from the top to the bottom. A 3D near-surface velocity model is then formed using the velocity models at all CMP locations. The tests on synthetic and observed seismic data show that the layer-stripping method can be used to build good near-surface velocity models for static correction, and its computation speed is approximately hundred times faster than that of grid tomography.
Time and Heritage
As a historian studying what can be considered a form of intellectual history, I have slowly come to adopt Michel de Certeau’s observation made at the end of the 1980s that ‘objectifying the past, for the last three centuries, has undoubtedly left unconsidered time within a discipline that has continued to use it as a taxonomic instrument’. To a certain degree, time has become commonplace for the historian who has preserved or instrumentalized it. It is not considered because it is inconceivable, but because we do not think of it or, more simply, we do not think about it. As a historian attempting to pay attention to the time I’m living in, I have thus, like many others, noticed the swift development of the category of the present until it has become obvious that the present is omnipresent. This is what I refer to here as ‘presentism’.