Re: poor seismic data in sequence stratigraphy
Welcome aboard!
To answer your question: It is always difficult (and frustrating) to use poor data for your studies and this is mainly driven by the fact that most theories and principles (that you read about in books and articles) are based on almost perfect datasets. This is a common frustration most geoscientists have and is debated on quite nicely by mr Catuneanu in his book . This is a good read anyways as it explains both theory and practice of sequence strat very well. He basically builds up the theory and then start knocking it down with all the exceptions to the rules..
The way forward in your project would probably be to start working with Seismic Facies. You'll probably have te define certain types of reflector characteristics and maybe link them to well logs if they are available. I understand that you can not identify offlap, downlap and other stratal terminations so this is not really an option... you can look at the continuity of reflectors and whether they thin or thicken in a certain direction. Choppy in-continuous reflectors may point towards a more reworked fluvial regime, while nice continuous reflectors often indicate more low energetic depositional settings like marine shales or carbonates. Try to look at the strenght of reflectors and the way they fade out. On a basin scale, remember that reflectors can almost never be traced over the entire basin. For instance, maximum flooding surfaces often loose character landwards and sequence boundaries may only be observable in the subaerial domain.
All in all, it will remain a big puzzle with a lot of uncertainty but you'll have to make the best of it. Also, print out a couple of lines on large sheets of paper and start colouring reflectors. Look almost parallel to the paper to see large scale wedges and reflectors thinning and thickening over long distances. Don't do everything on your computer screen.
Hope this helped!
