This is a textbook on the two-dimensional migration of stacked seismic data, authored by the man acknowledged to have introduced wave-equation methods into this field, and directed toward a readership of bright graduate students. The prestige of the author makes it inevitable that his text will be widely adopted in graduate education, but there is also a great deal to recommend this book to those of us who have a free choice as to whether to acquire it.
The most impressive strength of this work is the sheer excellence of its exposition of the principal topics that make up the core content of its subject. The explanations are concise, self-contained, lucid, and accessible. The author resorts to mathematical derivation only after the physical basis of a topic has been firmly established. Prof. Claerbout’s treatment of the fundamentals will enlighten those who encounter this material for the first time and those who need to communicate it to others.
The organization of topics is governed by the mathematical and physical logic that interconnects them, rather than by their sequence in the seismic data-processing stream. The first two sections (143 p.) introduce zero-offset migration, lay out the basic mathematics, and go on to develop both finite-difference and Fourier algorithms. Section 3 extends the basic concepts to confront nonzero-offset data; NMO stacking thus is introduced halfway through the book. Section 4 is mainly aimed at providing a scientific basis for the “cosmetic” aspects of practical finite-difference migration. The final section presents a collection of the author’s special interests.
The student reader is presumed to have access to a computer; there are both examples and exercises that require programming. Illustrative programs throughout the book are expressed in Ratfor, a perhaps well-intended but gratuitously cryptic condensation of standard Fortran notation.
As the foremost pioneer in wave-equation migration, Prof. Claerbout writes from a more authoritative perspective than many latter-day self-appointed experts; still, practitioners in the industry may find that they disagree with some opinions he propounds on questions of practical application. The reader who appreciates this book will regret that it contains virtually nothing on so important a subject as 3-D migration. Moreover, the discussion of how the wave equation can be applied to data before stacking seems quite parochial, limited mainly to things that have been tried by the author’s graduate students. The only really unclear writing noted by this reviewer occurs in the discussion of separability, when the distinction between downward continuation and migration becomes blurred, and the reader might easily form a mistaken impression of what processes can and cannot be applied in cascade. The index would benefit from more cross-references between Stanford terminology and common industry usage. For example, the reader looking up “Depth Migration” should also be guided to “Lens Term”; the special meaning of “CDP Gather” may elude the reader who misses its definition on p. 146.
This book improves upon the author’s prior one (Fundamentals of Geophysical Data Processing with Applications to Petroleum Prospecting, reviewed in February 1977 Geophysics, p. 130) in the areas in which they overlap. The older book is being reissued as a companion volume by Blackwell, at nearly twice its original price.
