TOMO3D: 3-D joint refraction and reflection traveltime tomography parallel code for active-source seismic data—synthetic test

• Published in: Geophysical journal international 2015-10, Vol.203 (1), p.158-174
• Main Authors: Meléndez, A., Korenaga, J., Sallarès, V., Miniussi, A., Ranero, C.R.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Computer Science; Sciences of the Universe
• ISSN: 0956-540X; 1365-246X
• DOI: 10.1093/gji/ggv292

We present a new 3-D traveltime tomography code (TOMO3D) for the modelling of active-source seismic data that uses the arrival times of both refracted and reflected seismic phases to derive the velocity distribution and the geometry of reflecting boundaries in the subsurface. This code is based on its popular 2-D version TOMO2D from which it inherited the methods to solve the forward and inverse problems. The traveltime calculations are done using a hybrid ray-tracing technique combining the graph and bending methods. The LSQR algorithm is used to perform the iterative regularized inversion to improve the initial velocity and depth models. In order to cope with an increased computational demand due to the incorporation of the third dimension, the forward problem solver, which takes most of the run time (∼90 per cent in the test presented here), has been parallelized with a combination of multi-processing and message passing interface standards. This parallelization distributes the ray-tracing and traveltime calculations among available computational resources. The code's performance is illustrated with a realistic synthetic example, including a checkerboard anomaly and two reflectors, which simulates the geometry of a subduction zone. The code is designed to invert for a single reflector at a time. A data-driven layer-stripping strategy is proposed for cases involving multiple reflectors, and it is tested for the successive inversion of the two reflectors. Layers are bound by consecutive reflectors, and an initial velocity model for each inversion step incorporates the results from previous steps. This strategy poses simpler inversion problems at each step, allowing the recovery of strong velocity discontinuities that would otherwise be smoothened.