Seismic Stratigraphy

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Seismic Stratigraphy
The term sequence was first applied by L.L. Sloss in 1948 to describe large-scale rock or
lithostratigraphic units, bounded by major unconformities, which extended across the cratonic
interior of North America. Sloss named his sequences after native North American tribes, and these
names still appear as mega and super sequences in the global cycle chart published by Exxon
Production Research (Haq et al., 1987). Eventually these units were recognized as the product of
cyclic changes in sea level, and the term sequence stratigraphy would develop.
During the 1950s, stratigraphy expanded rapidly from its classical base into a modern phase, in
which the interpretation of seismic reflection data would become critical. The descriptive field
methods of geology no longer provided sufficient details for exploring the subsurface in search of
minerals and hydrocarbon resources. Explorationists needed a better understanding of sedimentary
processes and deposits on a scale detailed enough to find stratigraphic traps using remote sensing
tools.
While the concept of seismic sequence stratigraphy is now generally accepted, its current
application evolved through a number of discrete steps. During the 1950s, a significant amount of
geological field work was done on modern depositional environments around the world. In France,
Gignoux published his classic text La Geologie Stratigraphique (Stratigraphic Geology). The
Huttonian dictum that "the present is the key to the past" was widely applied, This approach led to
a better understanding of basic sedimentary processes and depositional environments. Major
contributions to this research include the American Petroleum Institute's API-51 project on barrier
islands of the Texas Gulf Coast, under the direction of Francis Shepard; Harold Fisk's classic work
on the Mississippi River and Delta complex; laboratory flume experiments and field work on
turbidity flows and turbidites by Philip Kuenen in Holland, whose student Arnold Bouma would later
formulate a now classical model; and numerous field studies of reefs and carbonate platforms
throughout the world by a large number of geologists who enjoyed working in the sun and
underwater.
In 1956, Cesare Emiliani at the University of Chicago studied the oxygen isotope content of
planktonic calcareous shells from deep-sea cores and discovered that isotopes could provide a
means of approximating the paleochemistry and temperature of ocean water. This
paleotemperature technique became a valuable tool in the study of paleoclimatology,
cyclostratigraphy and biostratigraphy.
Significant contributions to research were made by petroleum companies, whose laboratories
pursued a better understanding of hydrocarbon-bearing formations and how oil and gas are
generated and trapped within formations. Based on direct field observations and shallow coring
programs in both siliciclastic and carbonate provinces, these studies led to correlations between
environmental processes and depositional lithofacies and to models which illustrate Holocene
sedimentary processes.
During the 1960s, these models were assembled into depositional systems, and used to correlate
the ancient rock record in outcrops, and, more importantly, well and seismic data. Such work on
the linkage between ancient and recent deposits made it apparent that we could infer depositional
processes from ancient depositional systems, and that these inferences might enable us to discover
new hydrocarbon source rocks and reservoirs.
At this point, researchers studying cyclic sedimentation were still documenting the existence of
depositional cycles, while trying to persuade the numerous doubters that most marine sediments
were deposited in response to fluctuations in sea level. The 1960s were also the decade of
controversy over the "innovative" ideas of continental drift and sea-floor spreading. Art Meyerhoff,
then editor of the AAPG Bulletin, was a talented and vociferous anti-drifter!

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In 1967, a drilling rig was towed off the coast of southern California in an attempt to drill the sea
floor. The main objective was to reach the Mohorovicik discontinuity, which marks the boundary
between Earth's crust and outer mantle. While unsuccessful in its primary mission, the operation
demonstrated the feasibility of deep-ocean drilling, and yielded a wealth of information about
marine sediments from the retrieved cores. Its potential to science evident, the drilling program
quickly found support within the geoscience community. The Deep Sea Drilling Project (DSDP) was
funded by the National Science Foundation, through a corporation of academic institutes from the
United States and overseas. One of the remarkable feats of the DSDP program, and its 1984
successor the Ocean Drilling Program (ODP), was the retrieval of continuous, undisturbed cores of
ocean basin sediments. Until this time, paleontologists had been limited to sampling discontinuous
outcrops on land and short cores from the sea floor. The new drilling program opened an
unprecedented window on Earth's history through the detailed sampling of stratigraphic sections
from the sea floor.
In the late 1960s, digital, common-depth-point acquisition methods dramatically improved the
quality of seismic reflection data. Sources also changed, from acoustic sources like dynamite, to
more practical and repetitive sources, like VibroseisTM on land and air gun arrays at sea. In
addition, the digital format enabled high-speed computer processing and provided significant
enhancements in the retrieval of weak seismic reflection signals. This new technology gave
geoscientists a high-quality remote sensing tool useful for mapping details of the subsurface. In
retrospect, the technology, while providing an amazing improvement at the time, would be
considered primitive compared to current 3-D seismic data and its manipulation on computer
workstations.
Refinements in seismic processing also revealed low-velocity amplitude anomalies in the
subsurface. These bright spots were interpreted as indirect hydrocarbon indicators of subsurface
gas reservoirs. This interpretation approach provided an alternative to petroleum exploration based
solely on structural plays.
Later in the decade, further enhancements in exploration methods included: greater multifold
coverage of subsurface points, improved seismic processing that led to inverse modeling, seismic
data displayed in color according to frequencies and amplitudes, and relative amplitude displays.
These high-technology tools made displaying and interpreting the finer details of the subsurface
easier while reducing the ambiguity associated with previous split-spread, single-shot seismic data.
By the early 1970s, the relative ease with which offshore seismic data could be acquired led to
volumes of data on both regional and detailed scales. This data would provide researchers fodder
from which the fundamentals of seismic sequence stratigraphy would emerge.
The basic concepts of seismic stratigraphy and a methodology for subsurface interpretation were
developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s by a team of researchers headed by Dr. Peter R. Vail
at Exxon Production Research (EPR). The bulk of their work was published in 1977 as part of AAPG
Memoir 26: Seismic Stratigraphy-applications to hydrocarbon exploration. With this publication,
EPR researchers placed in the public domain the basic interpretive tools, methods, and
nomenclature for determining the stratigraphy of sequences from seismic reflection profiles. The
following three statements summarize the basis of the new methodology as applied to marine
sedimentary deposits:
The depositional sequence is the basic unit for stratigraphic analysis, and we can
subdivide the configuration and geometry of seismic reflectors into sequences defining
the stratigraphic record. (See Original seismic stratigraphic models. Figure 1 ,

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Figure 1

a generalized stratigraphic section of a sequence, with the vertical axis measured in

depth and Figure 2 , a generalized chronostratigraphic section of a sequence, with the
vertical axis measured in time.

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Figure 2

) An individual sequence is the product of a cyclic change in relative sea level.

The position of an individual sequence's shoreward onlap, or pinch-out of coastal
deposits, can be used to assess relative changes in sea level. We can use this
information to locate an individual stratigraphic unit on a sea level-versus-time curve,
since relative sea level or coastal onlap curves summarize the history of the formation
of individual sequences ( Figure 3 , Regional seismic section displaying sequences).

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Figure 3

Through an iterative process of interpreting seismic records, and extracting the

relative changes in coastal onlap, we can construct a curve showing sea level changes
through time ( Figure 4 , Sea level chart, showing global cycles of changes in relative
sea level.

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Figure 4

Cretaceous cycles (hatchured area) have not been released for publication). EPR
researchers found that sea level curves from different sedimentary basins around the
world matched, a strong indication that a global mechanism controls the formation of
stratigraphic sequences.
These concepts were based on data from seismic lines on continental shelves and slopes around
the world, and on paleontologic and lithologic data from wells along these seismic lines. Each of
these elements represents a small piece in a vast and complex jigsaw puzzle, with the final image
being a relatively comprehensive, but somewhat tentative, history of geological events determined
from the sedimentary record. An especially significant result was the implication of global changes
in sea level as the principal causative element in the production of marine sedimentary sequences.
As we might expect, seismic stratigraphy quickly met opposition. Seismic stratigraphy was based
on the assumption that seismic reflectors follow bedding surfaces across facies boundaries, and
that seismic reflectors represent time lines or isochrons. Major reflectors were interpreted to
represent geologically instantaneous sheets of time. Seismic stratigraphy also assumed that
unconformities are surfaces along which major seismic reflections terminate.
In addition, the proprietary data used to produce the global sea level curve was not made public.
This causes controversy to this day, and has been a major impediment to the acceptance of
sequence stratigraphy by many geoscientists. Arguments against seismic stratigraphy were
frequently based on misconceptions, or on too rigid applications of the model, which was just that,
a model, and not an explanation of every conceivable sedimentary deposit. Nevertheless, as
seismic stratigraphy was used by geoscientists to interpret their own data, a consensus gradually
developed. Soon after its release, Memoir 26 became a best seller and the AAPG's most popular
publication, with more than 17,000 copies sold by 1993.

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Vail and his coworkers dramatically expanded Sloss's early stratigraphic sequence approach. Using
seismic data, Vail and his coworkers applied sequence stratigraphy on a finer scale, and developed
a method for subdividing seismic reflectors into sequences. The seismic sequences recognized by
Vail et al. occur with much higher frequency than do those of Sloss, correlate globally, and are
interpreted as the products of cyclic changes in eustatic sea level.
The key to identifying sequences is to recognize their bounding surfaces or unconformities. We can
most easily identify sequence boundaries when an angular relationship exists between underlying
truncated reflectors and overlying horizons that lap onto the boundary surface ( Figure 1 , Figure 2
and Figure 3 ). These boundaries can be very difficult to recognize when under- and overlying
reflectors are parallel and an angular unconformity is not present.
Once we have identified the sequences, we can construct a chronostratigraphic chart, with the
horizontal scale representing distance (usually down dip) and the vertical scale representing time
rather than depth. The upper panel of Figure 1 and Figure 2 shows a generalized stratigraphic
section of a sequence, with depth as the vertical axis. The lower panel shows a generalized
chronostratigraphic sequence, with the stratigraphic relationships shown in the upper panel
replotted with geologic time as the vertical axis. We use chronostratigraphic charts to depict the
geological and depositional history of an area. These charts, sometimes referred to as wheeler
diagrams (Wheeler, 1958), are well-suited to interpretations based on seismic sections, because
we can consider each major seismic horizon to be a reasonable approximation of a time surface or
isochron.
By applying the methods of seismic stratigraphy, geoscientists were able to identify seismic facies,
which, when coupled with inferences based on a predictive depositional model, could be used to
estimate the gross distribution of lithologies across a grid of seismic data. Well log data,
biostratigraphy, synthetic seismograms, and experience were all critical to the evolution from
seismic stratigraphy to sequence stratigraphy, from which we can derive a surprisingly complete
depiction of subsurface rock properties.

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