The role of angle dependent reflection coefficients in seismic reflection data to determine the local state of stress

Geomechanical modeling techniques require static elastic parameters of the rocks as input, while tectonic and gravitational forces are modeled as boundary conditions to compute the local state of stress at different scales. We developed a technique to determine the density and elastic constants at seismic frequencies using full Zoeppritz inversion on angle dependent seismic reflection data. The dynamic elastic parameters as obtained from seismic data differ from their static equivalents, which are necessary to determine the static state of stress. We relate the dynamic elastic constants to the static values through experimentally obtained relations. In these experiments, the static and dynamic elastic parameters are measured simultaneously. Then seismic data can provide the input parameters for geomechanical modeling. Moreover, the distribution of the local state of stress can be mapped directly from the seismic data by following the changes along a horizon boundary. This can provide information for the geo-mechanical model in the inverse modeling sense to determine the tectonic forces.