Développement de méthodes d’imagerie sismique par grand fond et d’analyse multiéchelle par ondelettes pour la caractérisation à haute résolution du sous-sol marin

High Resolution marine seismic is a common tool to indirectly study the fine scale structures of the sub-seabed and its related geohazards. In water depths, ranging from the continental slope to deep oceanic basin, high resolution seismic imaging cannot be achieved with conventional near-surface system due to a number of shortcomings. Since the 90s, the acquisition strategy has therefore striven for lowering both seismic sources and receivers close to the seafloor. Ifremer has recently developed a deep-towed seismic system (SYSIF), based on piezoelectric transducer technology and dedicated to the study of superficial sediments up to 6000 m water depth. Our objective is to achieve seismic imaging and seismic characterization at small scales consistent with the accuracy of in situ geotechnical measurements. We aim at improving the seismic resolution of the deep-towed seismic data and proposing quantitative methods for the characterization of the sediments properties. The processing sequence of SYSIF data was first optimized by introducing the source signature deconvolution. We improve the vertical resolution by a factor 2 and reach 1 m and .5 m resolution for the frequency ranges [220-1050 Hz] and [580-2200 Hz] respectively. In order to improve the lateral resolution, we assess the multioffset seismic imaging by setting up an experience based on the SYSIF source [220- 1050 Hz] and Ocean Bottom Hydrophones (OBHs). Such an acquisition requires precise positioning (which is achieved through acoustic relocation of sources and receivers) and the development of velocity analysis, processing and imaging methods suited to the acquisition geometry. We present a first application of this approach, performed during the ERIG3D cruise on a buried Mass transport Complex offshore Nigeria. The final seismic imaging has a 2.5 m lateral resolution and demonstrates the feasibility of a high resolution depth imaging in deep-sea based on deep-towed seismic source. The former results allowed the development of a multichannel high resolution streamer to be started by Ifremer To further improve the vertical resolution and to characterize the small scales structures of reflectors, we develop a multiscale analysis of deep-towed seismic data. This analysis relies on the wavelet response closely related to the continuous wavelet transform. The application of the wavelet response to broadband seismic data suffers from distortions generated by the bandpass filter effect of the seismic source. Two approaches have been proposed to account for these distortions. A first empirical approach is based on the wavelet transform of the seismic source. The second approach takes advantages of the properties of Lévy alpha-stable functions to obtain a family of effective dilated wavelets that enables the direct analysis of the medium’s Green functions. For the application on SYSIF data, gaussian derivatives are used which enable to merge information provided by both SYSIF sources (High and Very High Resolution) to obtain a wavelet response in the frequency range [220-2200 Hz]. We introduce new seismic attributes related to the wavelet response. These attributes are ridge functions of the wavelet response which constitute a sparse support of the multiscale information. Ridge function is an effective tool to characterize seismic reflector’s complexity and allow the determination of their characteristic size (in the range [24-115 cm] for SYSIF sources). Theoretical developments related to these new seismic attributes are applied on a case study associating seismic and ground truth data which enables to demonstrate the potential of the approach. Finally, we explore both the optimization of the source processing based on the fractional derivatives of the most adapted Lévy alpha-stable function and the acoustic impedance determination based on the inverse continuous wavelet transform. Thus, a first application of the inverse transform of the wavelet response related to SYSIF data provides an impedance profile with a vertical resolution of 25 cm.