A computer-implemented method for transforming seismic data traces corresponding to at least one source position and a plurality of receiver positions in a seismic survey of a subsurface region into a near-surface earth model of elastic shear wave propagation velocity or other physical property of the earth derivable therefrom including shear modulus, said method comprising: (a) dividing a near-surface part of the subsurface region into one or more cells; (b) simultaneous solving for at least two types of surface-consistent components of the seismic traces, wherein a surface-consistent component characterizes filtering effects either of propagation of a seismic surface wave mode across a cell (a propagation filter), or due to generation of surface wave energy at a source location (a source filter) or due to receiving of source wave energy at a receiver location (a receiver filter), and wherein a "type" of surface-consistent component is one of (i) a propagation filter for one surface wave mode, evaluated at all cells crossed by any of the seismic traces; (ii) a source filter, evaluated at all source locations for the seismic traces, or (iii) a receiver filter, evaluated at all receiver locations for the seismic traces; and (c) choosing one or more of the surface-consistent components, and using them to compute by numerical inversion a near-surface earth model of shear wave velocity or other physical property of the earth derivable therefrom as a function of ( x, y, z) location, wherein the method further comprises: for some or all of the traces and corresponding seismic source and receiver locations, computing the raypath distance across each intervening cell from the source location to the receiver location, and wherein the solution for surface-consistent components optimizes said components by a single comparison or iterated comparisons of data traces from the seismic survey and surface-wave predictions computed using assumed or iteratively updated components along with the computed raypath distances, and repeating steps (a)-(b) at least once, wherein the cell division in (a) is changed to improve consistency between predicted and survey data waveforms. (a) dividing a near-surface part of the subsurface region into one or more cells; (b) simultaneous solving for at least two types of surface-consistent components of the seismic traces, wherein a surface-consistent component characterizes filtering effects either of propagation of a seismic surface wave mode across a cell (a propagation filter), or due to generation of surface wave energy at a source location (a source filter) or due to receiving of source wave energy at a receiver location (a receiver filter), and wherein a "type" of surface-consistent component is one of (i) a propagation filter for one surface wave mode, evaluated at all cells crossed by any of the seismic traces; (ii) a source filter, evaluated at all source locations for the seismic traces, or (iii) a receiver filter, evaluated at all receiver locations for the seismic traces; and (c) choosing one or more of the surface-consistent components, and using them to compute by numerical inversion a near-surface earth model of shear wave velocity or other physical property of the earth derivable therefrom as a function of ( x, y, z) location, for some or all of the traces and corresponding seismic source and receiver locations, computing the raypath distance across each intervening cell from the source location to the receiver location, and wherein the solution for surface-consistent components optimizes said components by a single comparison or iterated comparisons of data traces from the seismic survey and surface-wave predictions computed using assumed or iteratively updated components along with the computed raypath distances, and repeating steps (a)-(b) at least once, wherein the cell division in (a) is changed to improve consistency between predicted and survey data waveforms.