Final Corrected Gathers

All migrated gathers are scaled using the previously displayed scaling function of the seafloor. A resulting final gather after preprocessing, migration, residual NMO correction, and amplitude calibration is shown in Figure . The final gather displays smoothly varying amplitudes with increasing offset, much improved compared to those shown before amplitude calibration (Figure ). In this gather, the bottom simulating reflector at the base of the hydrate stability field is characterized by a strong, negative reflectivity that increases negatively with increasing offset. This BSR amplitude behavior has also been observed by Lee et al. 1994 and Katzman et al. 1994.

After the final amplitude correction of the data, they can now be used as input into an impedance inversion and AVO modeling technique in order to evaluate the elastic properties of the hydrate-bearing sediments and those underlying the BSR. This is the content of the next chapter.