Patent ID: 8902697

Claim:
A method comprising: providing seismic data representing energy sensed in response to a first operation of at least one seismic source in a first seismic survey and a second operation of at least one seismic source in a second seismic survey; associating models with linear operators, the models describing geology associated with the sensed energy; characterizing the seismic data based at least in part on the models and the associated linear operators; processing the seismic data to determine a timing of the second operation relative to the first operation; and performing source separation to attribute a portion of the sensed energy to the first operation based at least in part on the determined timing and the characterization of the seismic data to generate a dataset representing the portion of the sensed energy wherein performing the source separation comprises: processing the data representing the timing and the characterization of the seismic data in a processor-based machine programmed to determine the models based at least in part on the timing and the characterization of the seismic data; and determining the dataset based at least in part on the models and the seismic data.