Reprocessing the CROP95-M18 vintage multichannel seismic data acquired in the northern Adriatic Sea: the case of high penetration crustal profile recorded in shallow waters

The CROP95-M18 seismic profile was acquired in 1995 as part of the 'CROsta Profonda' project, a regional survey carried out to explore the deeper structures of the Earth's crust in Italy. Although the high energy of the source allowed a high penetration depth, the vintage stacked section showed some areas of low signal-to-noise ratio, due to the acquisition in shallow water environments and related reverberations of surface and guided-waves. To improve the quality of the image, we reprocessed the 2D seismic line with the up-to-date processing techniques by adopting a specific workflow in time domain up to pre-stack time migration. In addition, we created an accurate interval velocity model by combining the coherency inversion technique and reflection tomography. This resulted in depth migration of the uppermost part of the profile (to a depth of 9 km), which was confirmed by the stratigraphy of the Amanda 1bis well. The reprocessing significantly improved the image of the profile and enabled new information on the seismo-stratigraphy to be gleaned from the vintage data. This was particularly important for science and research, as new seismic data with high penetration depths, such as the CROP profiles, are currently difficult to acquire.