none 10.1190/geo2024-0793.1 Society of Exploration Geophysicists Society of Exploration Geophysicists 186 174468415 5981 2025121212294842900 10.1190 2025-12-12T17:30:01Z 2025-04-02T10:55:59Z 1 Geophysics 0016-8033 1942-2156 01 07 2025 90 4 Donggeon Kim The Pennsylvania State University 1 , Department of Geosciences, University Park, Pennsylvania, USA. dqk5671@psu.edu http://orcid.org/0009-0003-4671-0382 Tieyuan Zhu The Pennsylvania State University 1 , Department of Geosciences, University Park, Pennsylvania, USA. dqk5671@psu.edu http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3172-8240 ABSTRACT Seismic attenuation, which leads to amplitude decay and phase velocity dispersion, reflects the mesoscopic heterogeneities in fluid-saturated porous media. As a result, seismic attenuation offers valuable insights into the lithology of porous sediments. We apply 2D viscoacoustic full-waveform inversion (Q-FWI) to the time-lapse data sets acquired in the North Sea Volve field to characterize the shale-sandstone sequence and oil reservoir and its production-related time-lapse changes. The Hessian approximated by Newton-conjugate gradient method and frequency-independent Q viscoacoustic wave propagation modeling enable its practical application. Time-lapse Q-FWI, applied to true-amplitude seismic data, produces high-resolution baseline and monitoring velocity and attenuation models as well as their time-lapse changes related to production, all of which are correlated with well-log data and align with prior knowledge of the field’s lithology, stratigraphy, and production history. These results confirm that the porous shale-sandstone sequence, with high intrapore clay content in the overburden, is the primary source of seismic attenuation in the Volve field. 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