Use of numerical methods in exploration geophysics

Uno will spend a couple of minutes talking about geophysics in general, then he will talk about the technical part.

For the technical part Uno will talk about geophysical modeling, which involves solving the wave equation. The problems in exploration geophysics are too complex for analytical solutions and therefore we rely on numerical solutions instead. He will show you how we discretize the wave equation, and will also present the concept of “grid staggering” (Virieux, 1986) which is a mathematical tool that allows us to solve the wave equation with much higher resolution than we get on the “normal grid”.