HR: 0830h
AN: OS51C-0881 [PDF]
TI: Characteristics of Gas Hydrate and Free Gas Offshore Southwestern Taiwan: A Combined Seismic
Reflection/Refraction Analysis
AU: * Schnurle, P
EM: schnurle@oc.ntu.edu.tw
AF: Institute of Oceanography, National Taiwan University, P. O. Box 23-13, Taipei, 106
Taiwan
AU: Liu, C
EM: csliu@ntu.edu.tw
AF: Institute of Oceanography, National Taiwan University, P. O. Box 23-13, Taipei, 106
Taiwan
AU: Hsiuan, T
EM: 048232@cpc.com.tw
AF: Chinese Petroleum Corp, Exploration and Development Research Institute, Miaoli, 360
Taiwan
AU: Wang, T
EM: tkwang@mail.ntou.edu.tw
AF: National Taiwan Ocean University, Institute of Applied Geophysics, Keelung, 202
Taiwan
AB:
Offshore southwestern Taiwan, BSRs have widely been observed in water depths ranging from 600 to 3000 m. The highest
concentration of BSR is located in the northwestern portion of the Manila accretionary prism where rapid deposited
terrigenous sediments may have relatively high amounts of organic carbon, thereby providing a source for the methane. Special
efforts have been made to derive the best velocity information from the seismic reflection and OBS refraction data. A series
of pre-stack depth migrations in a streamlined Deregowski loop was implemented in a layer stripping approach: During each
iteration, residual move-out in the image gathers are analyzed and the migration velocity field is update from the resulting
Depth/Depth error. In order to account for the 2D complexity of the surveyed area, about 15 iterations were necessary. Manual
picking was indispensable during the early iterations in order to stabilize the inversion processing by integrating the
interpreter's knowledge. A spatially continuous residual velocity analysis automatic picking has proven efficient for
refinement of the velocity model in the later stage. These acoustic velocities are then tested in a ray-tracing scheme on the
vertical and hydrophone components of the OBSs. A damped least-square to the linearized inverse problem, using the partial
derivatives of the travel times with respect to the model parameters and the travel time residuals better constrains the
acoustic velocities in the vicinity of the OBS. Poisson Ratio values we estimated at the vicinity of the 3 OBS stations
analyzed in this study will be presented. The modeling of the complex seismic waves recorded by the 4 component stations
allows us to propose estimates of the elastic properties of sediments bearing gas hydrate and free gas and derive hydrate
saturation values offshore southwestern Taiwan.
DE: 3025 Marine seismics (0935)
DE: 9320 Asia
SC: Ocean Sciences [OS]
MN: 2003 Fall Meeting