Scaling And Seismic Reflectivity: Implications Of Scaling On Avo

Abstract

AVO analysis of seismic data is based on the assumption that transitions in the earth consist of jump discontinuities only. The generalization of this type of transition to a more realistic class of transitions shows a drastic change in observed AVO behavior, especially for the large angles currently attained by increasing cable lengths. We propose a simple approach that accounts for this anomalous behavior by renormalizing the observed AVO. This renormalization allows for a separation of the observed AVO effects in terms of a conventional Zoeppritz contribution and a scaling contribution in those cases where the transitions can no longer be considered as isolated jump discontinuities. After renormalization, the inverted fluctuations regain their relative magnitudes which, due to the scaling, may have been significantly distorted. An example of these distortions are tuning effects, often erroneously interpreted as bright spots.