Seismic data is collected by creating an artifical sound source which sends energy through to and through layers of rock, reflecting the source seismic waveform up to geophones which record the reflected energy. The seismic source is dynamite or primacord or vibroseis trucks (like the upper right photo) or accellerated weight drops on-shore, and dynamite or air guns offshore. The receivers onshore are geophones (like the lower right photo) which have a coil surrounding a magnet inside of them. When the earth moves from the artificial seismic source, the case moves, the magnet stays stationary, and a signal is induced in the coil which is recorded as a seismic trace. There are arrays of geophones put out (from cables and groups of geophones shown in the bottom left photo) to cancel groundroll and other seismic noise. Offshore the receivers are pressure sensitive hydrophones. A typical seismic crew today records into well over 1,000 channels, where each channel will have an array of seismic receivers collecting the reflectd seismic energy. Seismic surveys quickly create pedabytes (thousnds of terabytes) of data. Seismic is the first truly big data problem computer science had to address.
(2-D processing, 3-D processing, fault interpretation, reef interpretation, and siliclastic interpretation)