The usefulness of geophone ground‐coupling experiments to seismic data

Abstract

Ground‐coupling devices measure local conditions around a geophone and are therefore useful for geophone design. For purposes of gathering seismic data, the data from local ground‐coupling experiments must be related to seismic data. In particular, the geophysicist wants to know whether a local measurement could help in detecting a ground‐coupling problem or in correcting the seismic data for it. Two sets of field experiments have been carried out to investigate these effects. Our experimental data of coupling‐measurement devices show that the behavior of well‐planted spiked geophones is determined by shear along the spike, while the behavior of poorly planted geophones is determined by its weight. However, when a link is established between the data from a coupling‐measurement device to seismic data, it becomes clear that the usefulness of this device for predicting problematic ground‐coupling phenomena in seismic data is very limited.