Abstract
Recent trends in reflection seismology, mainly on land, are reviewed here. Almost all material discussed in this review comes from those published in journals and presented at meetings of some societies related to seismology within the past ten years or so. Notable features of the past ten years or so are: (1) The development and application of the shallow seismic reflection method with high resolution, which is widely being used for detailed research on active faults and for surveys of the ground properties. (2) Applications of the seismic reflection method to various geological situations, such as faulted areas, tectonic areas, volcanic areas, the deep crust, and so on. (3) Trials for construction of smaller and easier exploration systems based on personal computers, which are now widely being used mainly in universities and are producing many reflection sections. Although until about ten years ago only a small number of specialists worked on the reflection method, many people who are interested in the reflection method have begun to work in this area. At present the seismic reflection method covers the depth range from several meters to a few tens of kilometers. The highest resolution is about 10 m in P-wave surveys and a few meters in S-wave surveys.
