This study makes use of advanced seismic imaging techniques to look beneath the surface of South Africa’s Kheis region. The results reveal hidden faults and folded rocks that help explain how ancient continents collided. The findings challenge older ideas about major geological boundaries and suggest a new model for how the crust formed and evolved. This work shows how old data, when re-analyzed with new methods and integrated with supporting data, can disclose important geological qualities.

Fast depletion of shallower deposits is pushing the mining industry to look for cutting-edge technologies for deep mineral targeting. We demonstrated a joint workflow including two state-of-the-art technologies: full-waveform inversion and reverse time migration. We produced Earth images with significant details which can help with better estimation of areas with high mineralisation, better mine planning and safety measures.

Methods for mineral exploration play an important role within the EU. Exploration must be environmentally friendly, cost effective, and feasible in populated areas. Seismic methods have the potential to deliver detailed images of mineral deposits but suffer from these demands. We show the results for a sparse 3D seismic dataset acquired in Sweden. The 3D depth image allows us to track the known mineralizations beyond the known extent and gives new insights into the geometry of the deposit.

In this article, we investigate the potential of reverse time migration (RTM) for deep targeting iron oxide deposits and the possible AVO effect that is potentially seen in the common image gathers from this migration algorithm. The results are promising and help to delineate the deposits and host rock structures using a 2D dataset from the Ludvika mines of central Sweden.

High-resolution seismic profiles in 2D are acquired in the north and south of the Chibougamau area, Quebec, Canada located in the northeast of the Abitibi Greenstone belt. The area mostly includes volcanic rocks, and both profiles cross over several fault zones. The seismic method is acquired to image the subsurface down to depth of 12 km. The main aim of this study is to image major fault zones and the geological formations connected to those faults to investigate metal endowment in the area.