Derecke Palmer is a leading international authority on near surface seismic refraction methods.  He is the originator of the generalized reciprocal method (GRM) for which he has received awards from Australian and international exploration geophysics societies, and the refraction convolution section (RCS).

His current research interests are largely focussed on the processing of full waveform seismic refraction data with Seismic Unix, in order to generate detailed compressional and shear wave models of the near surface.  These methods can be applied to statics corrections for seismic reflection data, especially where the weathering and sub-weathering are complex and where low signal-to-noise ratios occur, such as sand dunes, windy environments or near infrastructure.  Other applications include the extraction of detailed traveltime and amplitude attributes, in order to facilitate more comprehensive characterization of the near-surface for geotechnical, exploration and natural resource management, and to generate detailed starting models for traveltime and full waveform inversion.