ABSTRACT
The geophysical profession has been evolving a communications chain that effectively moves the geophysical data from its points of acquisition through several communication links and compaction steps and finally to the user community. All of the high-volume geophysical data is derived from reflection seismology. In this method, hundreds or thousands of sensitive motion detectors are deployed on the earth's surface or are towed near the surface of the ocean. After reaching the recording instruments in the field, geophysical data must somehow be transmitted to a large scale computer, there to begin the complex series of data-reduction steps needed to compress the raw data and to extract its useful information content. In the first two communications links of the geophysical chain, the on-going data explosion can be, and is being, accommodated by technological means, albeit not without some cost and effort.
