Why is colored seismic inversion called 'colored'? One of the seismic inversion algorithms is called 'colored' inversion. It is performed in the frequency domain and the point is in building an operator that directly transforms a seismic trace into reflectivity trace. The question is - what means 'colored' and why was the specified technique named this way?
Colored inversion is designed to approximately match the average spectrum of inverted seismic data with the average spectrum observed impedance (Lancaster and Whitcombe, 2000). The earth’s reflectivity can be considered fractal, and the resulting amplitude spectrum favors high frequencies (spectral blueing). If there was no preferred frequency, then you would have a "white spectrum", but as there are some frequencies with more energy, then it is called "colored".



Figure 4 from Lancaster and Whitcombe: Acoustic impedance from 4 sites in the North Sea