This is an in person event.
Meeting Location: 
Churrascos - River Oaks
2055 Westheimer Road
Houston, TX 77098

5:30 to 6:00 PM Happy Hour
6:00 to 7:00 PM Dinner
7:00 to 8:00 PM Presentation
8:00 until ...  Networking

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Speaker: Xiaolong Wei, Dept of Earth & Atmospheric Sciences, University of Houston
Co-Authors: Jiajia Sun, Dept of Earth & Atmospheric Sciences, Univ of Houston; Mrinal K. Sen, Institute for Geophysics, Univ of Texas at Austin

Quantifying uncertainty of salt body shapes recovered from geophysical data is a critical, yet largely under-explored, research problem. We develop a trans-dimensional Monte Carlo framework for analyzing the uncertainty of the recovered salt model shapes using gravity data. To address the computational challenges of Monte Carlo sampling, we propose a sparse geometry parameterization strategy to significantly reduce the number of unknowns. Further computational efficiency is achieved by resorting to randomized parallel tempering. To quantify the uncertainty of the recovered salt body shapes in different situations, we design several scenarios to simulate different constraints available in practice. To further constrain the salt body recovery, we develop a new method of using both fixed and random ellipses that are connected by their concave hull. We also propose a method for constructing salt probability models showing probabilities of salt materials at any spatial location. Our framework is applicable to both single-body and multi-body problems. We have successfully applied it to the modified SEG-EAGE, Sigsbee and Pluto salt models. It can be readily extended to a wide variety of other problems besides salt body imaging. One such example is 3D basin geometry which bears directly on groundwater and seismic hazard management.

Speaker Biography: Xianong Wei, Dept of Earth & Atmospheric Sciences, University of Houston
Xiaolong Wei is pursuing his Ph.D. degree in geophysics in Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at University of Houston. He received a M.Sc. degree in mineral exploration in 2018 from Northwest University, Xi’an, China, and a B.Sc. degree in geophysics in 2015 from China University of Geosciences (Beijing). He currently focuses on joint inversion and uncertainty analysis of potential field data inversion in both deterministic and Bayesian frameworks.

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