LAUSR

Seismic spectral decomposition applications are often restricted to the magnitude component of time–frequency spectra because it has been very challenging to make a meaningful interpretation of the phase information. In seismically thin layers, nevertheless, phase decomposition can be useful for the enhanced delineation of subsurface lateral variations, as seismic phase singularities are believed to tightly relate to the geologic features and geofluid effects. In this letter, we introduce an improved phase decomposition approach based on a high-resolution complex-spectra decomposition technique for better thin reservoir characterizations. The proposed method is applied to decompose seismic responses into the various phase components that sum to reconstruct the original traces. Via assuming the 0° phase seismic data, results from the synthetic and physical modeling examples imply that reflection anomalies associated with reservoir hydrocarbons can be magnified on the specific phase components. This magnification thus allows the reservoir geofluid variations to be better discriminated from certain lithologic influences that also substantially affect the total seismic reflection amplitudes, which are otherwise buried in the broadband responses.