Geophysicists talking shop, from fiber-optic cable to groundwater.
Seismic Soundoff is the Society of Exploration Geophysicists' interview podcast, where Andrew Geary talks with researchers and instructors about tools such as machine learning for seismic interpretation and fiber-optic distributed acoustic sensing. His questions stay practical and push guests beyond naming a technique, into its assumptions, its costs and how it is best taught.
PRESS PLAY
Seismic Soundoff is the podcast of the Society of Exploration Geophysicists, a series of interviews about how the subsurface is measured, imaged and put to use. Andrew Geary hosts, and the credits have him editing and producing as well. Guests in recent episodes include professors, course instructors, an honorary lecturer and article authors. Most arrive with something to talk about. It might be an SEG continuing education course, a short course at Image 2025, a lectureship or a new article, and that anchor lets the host ask how a method behaves in practice. Machine learning is the clearest thread. In 'From Hype to Reality: What Machine Learning Can Actually Do', Jerry Schuster, a research professor at the University of Utah and a pioneer in seismic interferometry, makes the case for learning by doing: run the code, make mistakes, find out why, and do it again. He links that to active learning, then admits mid-answer that his own replies are getting too long. 'Inside the Workflow - Unsupervised Machine Learning for Seismic Interpretation' goes into finer detail. Satinder Chopra and a co-author discuss a deepwater New Zealand case study that uses PCA and self-organizing maps, and Chopra explains why z-score normalization is strictly valid only for attributes with a Gaussian distribution, when many of them, spectral magnitudes among them, are skewed. Acquisition gets its own attention. In 'DAS and Seismic Innovation: What Geophysicists Need to Know', Ali Tura of the Colorado School of Mines lays out the case for distributed acoustic sensing. He cites spatial sampling that avoids aliasing problems, receivers that already exist as fiber-optic cable laid for other purposes, and a role in tracking fracture propagation during hydraulic fracturing where he sees no good alternative. Andrea Crook returns for '261: Innovations in Land Seismic Acquisition with Andrea Crook'. She is introduced as someone who teaches geoscientists to design smarter, more sustainable surveys, and her course aims to help students match equipment and survey geometry to both field operations and processing. The show also follows geophysics beyond oil, gas and minerals. Ahmed El-Shanawi, SEG's 2026 Middle East and Africa Honorary Lecturer, has applied geophysical methods to groundwater, water management and environmental monitoring across Egypt, the United Kingdom and the United States. Asked whether the move from extraction to environmental work is hard for veteran geophysicists, he says it is not very difficult, because the extra skills come through daily dealings with end users who have a groundwater problem and want more than geophysics. 'From Oil and Gas to Offshore Wind: Why Everyone Meets at OTC' turns to the Offshore Technology Conference in Houston. There a guest calls AI foundational and points to digital twins that anticipate equipment failure and to optimizing everything that moves on and off an offshore platform, food and helicopters included. The register is collegial and technical. Jargon comes up without much preamble, but the questions keep returning to practical matters, such as when an extra step is worth the effort and what someone taking a course should come away with.
Made for: Suits a listener in or near geophysics who wants researchers and instructors to explain how machine learning, distributed acoustic sensing and modern land acquisition work in practice. It also suits someone curious about how subsurface tools carry over to groundwater and environmental problems.
What sets it apart: Its conversations are anchored to SEG's own courses and lectureships and to new articles, so guests explain the assumptions and trade-offs behind a technique rather than just naming it, down to when a standard normalization step stops holding.
Seismic Soundoff showcases conversations addressing the challenges of energy, water, and climate. Produced by the Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG) and hosted by Andrew Geary of 51 features, these episodes celebrate and inspire the geophysicists of today and tomorrow. Three new episodes monthly.
A z-score gets questioned before you trust it with a seismic map.
Press play if you want
Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A grounded geophysics episode on learning machine learning through code, mistakes, and a careful blend of models with physics.
Machine learning lands in geophysics with the right practical question in view: what can working professionals actually do with it? Jerry Schuster, a research professor at the University of Utah and a pioneer in seismic interferometry, keeps the answer grounded in practice.
A practical guide to where distributed acoustic sensing excels, and where its geometry can complicate the work.
Distributed acoustic sensing gets a clear, technically grounded treatment as Ali Tura explains how fiber-optic cables can register signals across a wide frequency range.
A practical look at how OTC links offshore energy's people, tools, and shared challenges.
Offshore energy's future is framed here as a coordination challenge: engineers, geoscientists, innovators, and decision makers trying to work across disciplines as traditional resources share space with offshore wind and other emerging options.
A grounded look at how subsurface imaging can support better choices about soil, irrigation, and water.
Geophysics steps out of its usual deep-subsurface frame and into environmental and agricultural decision-making in this episode on soil moisture, salinity, aquifer systems, and water management.
A grounded look at how preprocessing shapes what unsupervised learning can reveal in seismic data.
Unsupervised machine learning can sound like an invitation to let the model take over seismic interpretation. Seismic Sound Off keeps the interpreter firmly in the chair, following Satinda Chopra and Kurt Marford through a deep-water New Zealand case study where preprocessing,…
Books, systems, and the questions that unlock them.
Coastal science, patiently and beautifully reported.
Soil life, climate repair, practical regeneration.
An interview with David Wunsch about the American Geosciences Institute's Critical Needs Document, which guides policymakers on geoscience issues like climate, water, and critical minerals.
Jerry Schuster, a University of Utah research professor and pioneer in seismic interferometry, explains why machine learning finally became practical after the mid-1990s failures of neural-network work.
Ali Tura says DAS measures about 0.05 nanostrain and can span almost zero hertz to 10 kilohertz, which is why he treats it as a sensor for everything from geomechanics to microseismic data.
Andrew Gary introduces Seismic Soundoff as a discussion of energy, water, and climate, then frames OTC 2026 around the theme “Steering Offshore Energy Innovation into the Future.” Alex Martinez and Joe Riley say the conference in Houston, Texas, from May 4 to May 7 brings together 13 technical societies and attendees from more than 100 countries.
Ahmed El-Shanawi, SEG’s 2026 Middle East and Africa Honorary Lecturer, explains how geophysics has moved from oil, gas, and minerals into agrogeophysics for soil moisture, salinity, and aquifer monitoring.
Seismic Soundoff's episode on unsupervised machine learning centers on Andrew Gehry's conversation with Satinda Chopra and Kurt Marford about a New Zealand Romney 3D seismic dataset.
Guest editors Mara Baez and Elizabeth LaRue explain to host Andrew Gary why the January 2026 Leading Edge special section on high performance computing arrived now, citing growing demand from high-frequency elastic FWI and a far more heterogeneous hardware supply.
Stella Yulio Landoka and Michael Partogi of the University of Indonesia's SEG Student Chapter led Project Aquinas, a Geoscientists Without Borders project examining landfill contamination of groundwater in Chipayung, near Depok.
Yung Kong Chin, host Andrew Gary's guest on SEG's Seismic Soundoff, describes taking a deep learning earthquake monitoring workflow from early 2016 experiments to production, raising detections from about 20 magnitude-2-and-above events per month to more than 10,000 small ones.
Host Andrew Geary interviews Andrea Crook about innovations in land seismic acquisition, including high-density vibroseis, nodal systems, and sustainable survey design.
An interview with David Luboroblis about detecting small offset faults in seismic data for safe CO2 storage in carbon capture projects.
Host Andrew Geary interviews Adam Buckey about the 4D Forum, discussing how 4D seismic technology creates value in energy production and carbon storage.
Celebrating the 250th episode with Craig Beasley discussing the impact and future of humanitarian geophysics through the Geoscientists Without Borders program.