A brute-strength approach to improving the quality of seismoelectric data

Abstract

Successfully acquiring seismoelectric data is extremely difficult, mainly due to the inherently low signal-to-noise (SNR) ratio of the data. This difficulty is exacerbated by the weak sources (usually a sledgehammer) and low channel counts (12 to 24) commonly employed. In this article, we summarise two experiments we conducted to overcome these SNR limitations using a ‘brute-strength’ approach, i.e., employing a large seismic source, a hydraulic vibrator, and relatively high channel counts.