MUTING THE NOISE CONE IN NEAR-SURFACE REFLECTION DATA - AN EXAMPLE FROM SOUTHEASTERN KANSAS

A 300-m near-surface seismic reflection profile was collected in south eastern Kansas to locate a fault(s) associated with a recognized strat igraphic offset on either side of a region of unexposed bedrock. A sub stantial increase in the S/N ratio of the final stacked section was ac hieved by muting all data arriving in time after the airwave. Methods of applying traditional seismic data processing techniques to near-sur face data (200 ms of data or less) often differ notably from hydrocarb on exploration-scale processing (3-4 s of data or more). The example o f noise cone muting used is contrary to normal exploration-scale seism ic data processing philosophy, which is to include all data containing signal. The noise cone mute applied to the data removed more than one -third of the total data volume, some of which contains signal. In thi s case, however, the severe muting resulted in a higher S/N ratio in t he final stacked section, even though some signal could be identified within the muted data. This example supports the suggestion that nontr aditional techniques sometimes need to be considered when processing n ear-surface seismic data.