AccScience Publishing / JSE / Online First / DOI: 10.36922/JSE025190001
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Seismic reflection modeling of an atoll: A comparison between pre- and post-stack migration sections

Şerife Boğazkesen1* ,  Hakan Karslı2
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1 Department of Civil Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Atatürk University, Erzurum, Turkey
2 Department of Geophysics Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Karadeniz Technical University, Trabzon, Turkey
JSE 2025, 34(1), 025190001 https://doi.org/10.36922/JSE025190001
Submitted: 8 May 2025 | Revised: 18 July 2025 | Accepted: 20 July 2025 | Published: 30 July 2025
© 2025 by the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )
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Abstract

Atoll structures formed in complex geological settings act as stratigraphic hydrocarbon traps and are typically circular or elliptical reef structures with a large lagoon at the center. Initially, the circular reef with flat limestone serves as a potential reservoir rock and holds significant importance in the petroleum industry, as it forms hydrocarbon-bearing traps. Therefore, identifying these structures in seismic sections is crucial. To understand the seismic behavior of atoll structures, seismic shot gathers of a geological model were generated, and migration sections were obtained. In this study, artificial data modeling of an atoll structure containing oil traps was carried out using the two-dimensional acoustic finite difference method due to its practicality and the flexibility to select different trap models as needed. Seismic data modeling was performed in a pre-stack shot domain, and two different data processing stages were applied to the shot data to obtain pre-stack and post-stack Kirchhoff time migration sections. The spatial location and size of hydrocarbon traps in the migration sections were determined and compared with the initial atoll model. In this way, the seismic response of hydrocarbon trap structures in the atoll model was analyzed. The importance of the two different data processing methods was also examined. As a result, it was observed that the pre-stack Kirchhoff time migration method provides better results than the post-stack time migration method for the atoll model.

Keywords
Atoll
Acoustic finite difference method
Pre- and post-stack Kirchhoff time migration
Funding
None.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.
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Journal of Seismic Exploration, Print ISSN: 0963-0651, Published by AccScience Publishing
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