Conventional seismic techniques are inadequate for delineating most stratigraphic traps. The effectiveness of the seismic methods is limited by unpredictable changes in near-surface layers, inadequate resolving power, additive noise, and multiple reflections. An effective solution is to transform each seismic trace into the equivalent of a smoothed multiple-free synthetic seismogram which could be constructed from an acoustic log at that location. The degree of smoothing will differ according to each exploration prospect but is basically defined by the band-width which will generate a wavelet sufficiently sharp to resolve the interfaces being investigated. Time and space varying problems are attacked by multi-channel filtering processes and by deconvolution. Controlled fi ld tests in the United States and Canada illustrate the application of field and processing techniques to the problem of obtaining from field data the time traces which yield an adequate measure of subsurface response. Skillful blending of field-recording methods and processing techniques is required to develop a total system uniquely related to each set of seismic conditions.

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