What is it about?
Seismic air guns are widely used in offshore oil and gas exploration to generate the acoustic waves that are used to image the subsurface. However, there is mounting concern about the impact of seismic air guns on marine life. Here, we examine what controls the signal generated by a seismic air gun with the goal of informing future, more environmentally friendly, source design and operation.
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Why is it important?
This work is important because it examines how to design a more environmentally friendly air gun (less harmful and disruptive to marine life) while maintaining the ability to image the targets of interest, which range from oil and gas deposits to subduction zones.
Perspectives
This project posed a challenge between working on an interesting problem from the physics and mathematical perspective and doing work about hydrocarbon exploration, when I firmly think that society needs to move away from fossil fuel production. I was able to reconcile these competing viewpoints by recognizing that seismic air guns will continue to be used in a variety of applications, including non-oil and gas applications, for the foreseeable future. Therefore, we should try to minimize the impacts of seismic surveys on marine life. This work discuss what factors control the dynamics of a seismic air gun so that these factors can be varied in future source design and operation to make more environmentally friendly sources.
Leighton Watson
Stanford University
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This page is a summary of: What controls the initial peak of an air-gun source signature?, Geophysics, March 2019, Society of Exploration Geophysicists,
DOI: 10.1190/geo2018-0298.1.
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