Systems and methods for detecting seismic discontinuities by coherence estimation

A method of detecting a geological discontinuity in a subsurface region, the method comprising:

• generating seismic energy using one or more seismic sources;
• receiving the seismic energy using a plurality of receivers;
• storing the received seismic energy as seismic data;
• dividing the seismic data into plurality of data analysis volumes, each data analysis volume comprising a plurality of seismic traces of the seismic data;
• generating a data matrix for each of the plurality of data analysis volumes, wherein each data matrix comprises a plurality of signal values for each of the plurality of seismic traces;
• estimating a coherence between the plurality of seismic traces in each of the plurality of data analysis volumes by computing a sum of squares value of each row for each generated data matrix, and summing the sum of square values for each of the generated data matrices to generate an estimated coherence for each of the plurality of data analysis volumes;
• correlating each of the estimated coherences to a location in the subsurface region corresponding with the data analysis volume to generate a digital coherence image of the subsurface region;
• and
• identifying a location of a geological discontinuity in the subsurface region based on the digital coherence image.

A system comprising:

• one or more seismic sources for generating seismic energy;
• a plurality of receivers for receiving the seismic energy and generating seismic data from the seismic energy;
• one or more processors;
• and
• one or more non-transitory memory modules communicatively coupled to the one or more processors and storing machine-readable instructions that, when executed, cause the one or more processors to:
• receive and store the seismic data;
• divide the seismic data into plurality of data analysis volumes, each data analysis volume comprising a plurality of seismic traces of a geophysical dataset;
• generate a data matrix for each of the plurality of data analysis volumes, wherein each data matrix comprises a plurality of signal values for each of the plurality of seismic traces;
• estimate a coherence between the plurality of seismic traces in each of the plurality of data analysis volumes by computing a sum of squares value of each row for each generated data matrix, and summing the sum of squares values for each of the generated data matrices to generate an estimated coherence for each of the plurality of data analysis volumes;
• and
• correlate each of the estimated coherences to a location in a subsurface region corresponding with the data analysis volume to generate a digital coherence image of the subsurface region.