Robust wave-equation surface-wave skeletonized inversion for near-surface environments

A robust imaging technology is reviewed that provide subsurface information in near-surface environments: wave-equation skeletonized inversion of surface waves for the S-velocity model and quality factor (Qs) structure. We demonstrate the benefits and liabilities of the method with synthetic seismograms and field data. The benefit of skeletonized inversion method is that it has higher resolution than the conventional 1D method and mostly avoids getting stuck in local minima. The synthetic and field data examples demonstrate that it is a robust method so that the complex near-surface structure can be reliably obtained with seismic surveys over near-surface environment. It is easily extended to anisotropic media or rugged topography seismic survey. The liability is that is almost as expensive as full-waveform inversion (FWI) and the resolution almost lower than FWI method.