Rock Physics Handbook, First Edition, 1998
The Rock Physics Handbook, First Edition, 1998

Gary Mavko, Tapan Mukerji, and Jack Dvorkin
Rock Physics Laboratory
Stanford University

The Rock Physics Handbook is published by Cambridge University Press.
Second Edition, 2009

Table of Contents | Errata

Over the last three decades enormous strides have been made to understand the connections between physical properties of rocks and geophysical observables -- the science now known as Rock Physics. Scientists have discovered an increasing amount of order in relations that once appeared disappointingly scattered, such as seismic wave velocity versus porosity, porosity versus permeabiity, velocity versus fluid saturation and lithology. The Rock Physics Handbook conveniently brings together the theoretical and empirical relations that form the foundations of rock physics, with particular emphasis on seismic properties. It also includes commonly used models and relations for electrical and dielectric rock properties.

76 stand-alone articles concisely summarize a wide range of topics, including wave propagation, AVO-AVOZ, effective media, poroelasticity, pore fluid flow and diffusion. The book contains overviews of dispersion mechanisms, fluid substitution, and Vp-Vs relations. Useful empirical results on reservoir rocks and sediments, granular media, tables of mineral data, and an atlas of reservoir rock properties complete the text.

This distillation of an otherwise scattered and eclectic mass of knowledge is presented in a form that can be immediately applied to solve real problems. Geophysics professionals, researchers and students as well as petroleum engineers, well log analysists, and environmental geoscientists will value the Rock Physics Handbook as a resource for practical problem solving.

When we wrote the Rock Physics Handbook, we focused on collecting useful equations -- those relations that we derive once every two years and then forget, or find ourselves searching for in piles of articles, or somewhere in that shelf of books, or on scraps of paper taped to the side of the filing cabinet. Our approach was to present results, with a few of the key assumptions and limitations, and almost never any derivations. Our intention was to create a reference, and not a textbook. We assume that the reader will be generally aware of the various topics, and if not, we provide a few references to the more complete descriptions in books and journals. The Rock Physics Handbook is presented as 76 stand-alone articles. We wanted the user to be able to go directly to the topic of interest and to find all of the necessary information within a few pages, without the need to refer to previous chapters, as in a conventional textbook. As a result, there is an occasional redundancy in the explanatory text.

We wish to thank the faculty, students, and industrial affiliates of the Stanford Rock Physics and Borehole Geophysics (SRB) project for many valuable comments and insights. We found particularly useful discussions with Zhijing Wang, Thierry Cadoret, Ivar Brevik, Sue Raikes, Sverre Strandenes, Mike Batzle, and Jim Berryman. Li Teng contributed the chapter on anisotropic AVOZ, and Ran Bachrach contributed to the chapter on dielectric rock properties. Ranie Lynds helped with the graphics and did a marvelous job of proofing and editing. Thanks to Barbara Mavko for many useful comments on content and style. And as always, we are indebted to Amos Nur whose work, past and present, has helped to make the field of Rock Physics what it is today.

We hope you find this handbook useful.

Table of Contents

Errata for the 1st Edition (1998) of the Rock Physics Handbook

Thanks to careful readers, we have identified the following errors. Please let us know if you find any more errors.
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