Rockin’ all over Europe Per Avseth, 2009 Honorary Lecturer, Europe So, I grab my suitcase crammed with clean shirts, swing my laptop bag across my shoulder, and leap out of Bergen town to bounce around in Europe for the next few weeks and talk about rocks and oil. Do I feel like a rock star, or what? Well, no groupies, no band, but what a blast being the SEG Honorary Lecturer in Europe this year. Last week I visited Leeds, UK, the heart of Yorkshire. It was the first of 19 cities on my route set up for rock physics preaching across the lands of Europe. Here I arrived in a sprawling university town, and inside the campus I encountered enthusiastic professors and energetic students that made the commencement of my SEG lecture tour a warm and memorable one.  Per Avseth During my one-hour lecture at Leeds, I showed highlights from more than 10 years of experience with applying rock physics tools to better understand what is hidden behind the seismic wiggles and sonic measurements in terms of rock and pore-fluid properties. “Mind the gap” was the red thread of my talk, having stolen that phrase from the tube stations in London. The gap in my story, however, was more than a few centimeters between a train and a platform. It turns out that the rock texture we observe in cores and thin sections at microscale is strongly affecting the seismic reflection amplitudes that we observe at the scale of tens of meters. Here, rock physics models come in handy for several reasons. We can apply them to interpret our sonic well-log measurements or our seismic inversion data. In a way, we are using our effective rock physics models to downscale our geophysical observations to geological information about subsurface rock and fluid properties. We can also use rock physics models to extrapolate away from observed “needle-sticks” of wells in the earth and say something about expected seismic signatures for various lithology and pore-fluid scenarios, via rock physics upscaling and seismic modeling. The gap I am talking about also has another meaning: the gap between disciplines. Rock physics, the way I see it, is really a bridge between qualitative geology and quantitative geophysics. Our geophysical models must be constrained by knowledge from experienced geologists, and our geological interpretation of seismic and well-log data must be made with a good physical understanding of the geophysical observables. After my talk at Leeds, I leapt at the chance to extrapolate myself from the auditorium to a local bar, where I got to investigate other fluids than oil and discuss with students their cutting-edge research. Next I went to London and stop number two, Imperial College, another renowned institution where I had the great opportunity to meet with bright faculty and students. I feel lucky to be able to meet with young bright minds across Europe, and indeed I see future Geophysics and The Leading Edge articles that will reach out to all SEG members, on topics ranging from 4D attenuation to CO2 sequestration. Doing the SEG honorary lecture tour is not only a teaching experience, it’s a great learning experience. But most of all it is a “missionary” task, where I get to spread the word about rock physics and about the great benefits of being an SEG member. Well, two down, seventeen to go. I gotta run; see you around in Europe this spring! March 2009 | 
