Interferometric predcition and least squares subtraction of surface waves

Surface waves are one of the main types of coherent noise in land seismic surveys, and standard filtering methods, such as f-k filtering, are not always effective. We describe an interferometric method for predicting surface waves and their removal from raw seismic data by a least squares matching filter. The interferometric method enables the prediction of surface waves by using crosscorrelation between two different traces. Compared to other surface wave filtering methods, the interferometric method can "naturally" predict surface waves from other shot gathers without the use of an a priori velocity model. A land seismic field data contaminated by high energy surface waves is used to test the effectiveness of the interferometric prediction and subtraction strategies. Preliminary results with a single data set suggest that surface waves can be predicted and mostly attenuated by this method.