We present a surface-wave inversion method that inverts for the S-wave velocity from the
Rayleigh wave dispersion curve using a difference approximation to the gradient of the misfit
function. We call this wave equation inversion of skeletonized surface waves because the
skeletonized dispersion curve for the fundamental-mode Rayleigh wave is inverted using
finite-difference solutions to the multi-dimensional elastic wave equation. The best match
between the predicted and observed dispersion curves provides the optimal S-wave velocity …