Exploration system for enhancing the likelihood of the discovery of deposits of ore, marker rock and/or economic minerals

Method of accurately determining shape and elastic parameters of an earth formation to identify ore, marker rocks, economic minerals or the like, using a refraction exploration field system including a series of detectors, positioned along a line or survey at inline positions X.sub.1, X.sub.2, . . . X.sub.n and at least one seismic source located adjacent to said detectors for producing a seismic wave for travel through said formation:

• (a) generating a seismic wave at a first sourcepoint location adjacent said series of detectors;
• (b) after said wave undergoes refraction, detecting arrival of a refracted wave at said series of detectors at said inline offset positions, to obtain a first set of traces associated with said offset positions X.sub.1, X.sub.2, . . . X.sub.n ;
• (c) repeating steps (a) and (b) by generating a second wave at a second sourcepoint adjacent to inline position X.sub.n of said detector positions, and detecting said refracted wave to obtain a second set of traces;
• (d) advancing said series of detectors a selected number of inline positions or fractions thereof and repeating steps (a), (b) and (c) above to obtain additional sets of traces, but in which said additional sets of traces are associated with more than two inline positions overlapping common inline positions of said first and second sets of traces;
• (e) distinguishing arrival times of shear waves from compressional waves by means of two-dimensional hodographs generated by a computer-dominated process;
• and
• (f) analyzing arrival times of at least one segment of (i) shear waves and (ii) compressional waves as a function of inline position whereby shape of said earth formation as well as elastic parameters indicative of likelihood of said formation being an ore, marker rock, economic mineral, and the like, are provided.