Semblance, coherence, and other discontinuity attributes

Abstract

Discontinuity calculations, also called coherence or semblance, are some of the most commonly used seismic attributes. They measure the amount of similarity between adjacent seismic traces. However, there are several types of discontinuity estimates and a plethora of names for similar attributes. As a result, it can be difficult to understand the differences among them. Although the discontinuity algorithm that any particular software package uses might be unknown, most are based on one of a few published methods. Understanding published discontinuity attributes gives insight into the trade-offs among different proprietary implementations. Therefore, in this tutorial and the accompanying Jupyter notebook, we will explore simplified Python implementations of a few widely used discontinuity algorithms.