scholarly journals Grid preparation for magnetic and gravity data using fractal fields

2012 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 291-296 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Pilkington ◽  
P. Keating

Abstract. Most interpretive methods for potential field (magnetic and gravity) measurements require data in a gridded format. Many are also based on using fast Fourier transforms to improve their computational efficiency. As such, grids need to be full (no undefined values), rectangular and periodic. Since potential field surveys do not usually provide data sets in this form, grids must first be prepared to satisfy these three requirements before any interpretive method can be used. Here, we use a method for grid preparation based on a fractal model for predicting field values where necessary. Using fractal field values ensures that the statistical and spectral character of the measured data is preserved, and that unwanted discontinuities at survey boundaries are minimized. The fractal method compares well with standard extrapolation methods using gridding and maximum entropy filtering. The procedure is demonstrated on a portion of a recently flown aeromagnetic survey over a volcanic terrane in southern British Columbia, Canada.

2021 ◽  
Vol 95 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mirjam Bilker-Koivula ◽  
Jaakko Mäkinen ◽  
Hannu Ruotsalainen ◽  
Jyri Näränen ◽  
Timo Saari

AbstractPostglacial rebound in Fennoscandia causes striking trends in gravity measurements of the area. We present time series of absolute gravity data collected between 1976 and 2019 on 12 stations in Finland with different types of instruments. First, we determine the trends at each station and analyse the effect of the instrument types. We estimate, for example, an offset of 6.8 μgal for the JILAg-5 instrument with respect to the FG5-type instruments. Applying the offsets in the trend analysis strengthens the trends being in good agreement with the NKG2016LU_gdot model of gravity change. Trends of seven stations were found robust and were used to analyse the stabilization of the trends in time and to determine the relationship between gravity change rates and land uplift rates as measured with global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) as well as from the NKG2016LU_abs land uplift model. Trends calculated from combined and offset-corrected measurements of JILAg-5- and FG5-type instruments stabilized in 15 to 20 years and at some stations even faster. The trends of FG5-type instrument data alone stabilized generally within 10 years. The ratio between gravity change rates and vertical rates from different data sets yields values between − 0.206 ± 0.017 and − 0.227 ± 0.024 µGal/mm and axis intercept values between 0.248 ± 0.089 and 0.335 ± 0.136 µGal/yr. These values are larger than previous estimates for Fennoscandia.


2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 265-276
Author(s):  
Fathi M.S. Abdullah ◽  
Abdullatif A. Al-Shuhail ◽  
Oluseun A. Sanuade

Subsurface cavities occur naturally by dissolution of carbonates and evaporites or by human action, such as the construction of tunnels and tombs. They can be filled with air, water, sediments, or a combination. Gravity and ground penetrating radar (GPR) methods have been used widely to determine the location and size of subsurface cavities. The objective of this study is to present a quantitative approach to estimate the porosity and water saturation of cavity-filling materials from GPR and gravity measurements. The approach uses appropriate rock-physics models of the dielectric permittivity and density of a shallow cavity and estimates the porosity and water saturation inside the cavity by solving the two model equations simultaneously for these two variables. We test the proposed method using synthetic GPR and gravity data sets corresponding to three spherical-cavity models: air-filled, water-filled, and a partially-saturated sand filling. Results show that the method is accurate in retrieving the correct porosity within 0.76% error and water saturation within 2.4% error. We also apply the method on three published case studies over air-filled rectangular cavities. We found that the proposed method estimated the correct porosity and water saturation in one study but failed with the other studies. However, when the procedure was repeated with gravity values calculated from parameters reported in these studies, the proposed method estimated the correct porosity and water saturation accurately.


Geophysics ◽  
1994 ◽  
Vol 59 (6) ◽  
pp. 902-908 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lindrith Cordell

Potential‐field (gravity) data are transformed into a physical‐property (density) distribution in a lower half‐space, constrained solely by assumed upper bounds on physical‐property contrast and data error. A two‐step process is involved. The data are first transformed to an equivalent set of line (2-D case) or point (3-D case) sources, using Euler’s homogeneity equation evaluated iteratively on the largest residual data value. Then, mass is converted to a volume‐density product, constrained to an upper density bound, by “bubbling,” which exploits circular or radial expansion to redistribute density without changing the associated gravity field. The method can be developed for gravity or magnetic data in two or three dimensions. The results can provide a beginning for interpretation of potential‐field data where few independent constraints exist, or more likely, can be used to develop models and confirm or extend interpretation of other geophysical data sets.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Amir Maleki ◽  
Richard Smith ◽  
Esmaeil Eshaghi ◽  
Lucie Mathieu ◽  
David Snyder ◽  
...  

This paper focusses on obtaining a better understanding of the subsurface geology of the Chibougamau area, in the northeast of the Abitibi greenstone belt (Superior craton), using geophysical data collected along a 128 km long traverse with a rough southwest–northeast orientation. We have constructed two-dimensional (2D) models of the study area that are consistent with newly collected gravity data and high-resolution magnetic data sets. The initial models were constrained at depth by an interpretation of a new seismic section and at surface by the bedrock geology and known geometry of lithological units. The attributes of the model were constrained using petrophysical measurements so that the final model is compatible with all available geological and geophysical data. The potential-field data modelling resolved the geometry of plutons and magnetic bodies that are transparent on seismic sections. The new model is consistent with the known structural geology, such as open folding, and provides an improvement in estimating the size, shape, and depth of the Barlow and Chibougamau plutons. The Chibougamau pluton is known to be associated with Cu–Au magmatic-hydrothermal mineralisation and, as the volume and geometry of intrusive bodies is paramount to the exploration of such mineralisation, the modelling presented here provides a scientific foundation to exploration models focused on such mineralisation.


2020 ◽  
Vol 94 (9) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lars E. Sjöberg

Abstract As the KTH method for geoid determination by combining Stokes integration of gravity data in a spherical cap around the computation point and a series of spherical harmonics suffers from a bias due to truncation of the data sets, this method is based on minimizing the global mean square error (MSE) of the estimator. However, if the harmonic series is increased to a sufficiently high degree, the truncation error can be considered as negligible, and the optimization based on the local variance of the geoid estimator makes fair sense. Such unbiased types of estimators, derived in this article, have the advantage to the MSE solutions not to rely on the imperfectly known gravity signal degree variances, but only the local error covariance matrices of the observables come to play. Obviously, the geoid solution defined by the local least variance is generally superior to the solution based on the global MSE. It is also shown, at least theoretically, that the unbiased geoid solutions based on the KTH method and remove–compute–restore technique with modification of Stokes formula are the same.


2020 ◽  
Vol 221 (3) ◽  
pp. 1542-1554 ◽  
Author(s):  
B C Root

SUMMARY Current seismic tomography models show a complex environment underneath the crust, corroborated by high-precision satellite gravity observations. Both data sets are used to independently explore the density structure of the upper mantle. However, combining these two data sets proves to be challenging. The gravity-data has an inherent insensitivity in the radial direction and seismic tomography has a heterogeneous data acquisition, resulting in smoothed tomography models with de-correlation between different models for the mid-to-small wavelength features. Therefore, this study aims to assess and quantify the effect of regularization on a seismic tomography model by exploiting the high lateral sensitivity of gravity data. Seismic tomography models, SL2013sv, SAVANI, SMEAN2 and S40RTS are compared to a gravity-based density model of the upper mantle. In order to obtain similar density solutions compared to the seismic-derived models, the gravity-based model needs to be smoothed with a Gaussian filter. Different smoothening characteristics are observed for the variety of seismic tomography models, relating to the regularization approach in the inversions. Various S40RTS models with similar seismic data but different regularization settings show that the smoothening effect is stronger with increasing regularization. The type of regularization has a dominant effect on the final tomography solution. To reduce the effect of regularization on the tomography models, an enhancement procedure is proposed. This enhancement should be performed within the spectral domain of the actual resolution of the seismic tomography model. The enhanced seismic tomography models show improved spatial correlation with each other and with the gravity-based model. The variation of the density anomalies have similar peak-to-peak magnitudes and clear correlation to geological structures. The resolvement of the spectral misalignment between tomographic models and gravity-based solutions is the first step in the improvement of multidata inversion studies of the upper mantle and benefit from the advantages in both data sets.


2014 ◽  
Vol 644-650 ◽  
pp. 2670-2673
Author(s):  
Jun Wang ◽  
Xiao Hong Meng ◽  
Fang Li ◽  
Jun Jie Zhou

With the continuing growth in influence of near surface geophysics, the research of the subsurface structure is of great significance. Geophysical imaging is one of the efficient computer tools that can be applied. This paper utilize the inversion of potential field data to do the subsurface imaging. Here, gravity data and magnetic data are inverted together with structural coupled inversion algorithm. The subspace (model space) is divided into a set of rectangular cells by an orthogonal 2D mesh and assume a constant property (density and magnetic susceptibility) value within each cell. The inversion matrix equation is solved as an unconstrained optimization problem with conjugate gradient method (CG). This imaging method is applied to synthetic data for typical models of gravity and magnetic anomalies and is tested on field data.


2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. T243-T257 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Landrø ◽  
Mark Zumberge

We have developed a calibrated, simple time-lapse seismic method for estimating saturation changes from the [Formula: see text]-storage project at Sleipner offshore Norway. This seismic method works well to map changes when [Formula: see text] is migrating laterally away from the injection point. However, it is challenging to detect changes occurring below [Formula: see text] layers that have already been charged by some [Formula: see text]. Not only is this partly caused by the seismic shadow effects, but also by the fact that the velocity sensitivity for [Formula: see text] change in saturation from 0.3 to 1.0 is significantly less than saturation changes from zero to 0.3. To circumvent the seismic shadow zone problem, we combine the time-lapse seismic method with time-lapse gravity measurements. This is done by a simple forward modeling of gravity changes based on the seismically derived saturation changes, letting these saturation changes be scaled by an arbitrary constant and then by minimizing the least-squares error to obtain the best fit between the scaled saturation changes and the measured time-lapse gravity data. In this way, we are able to exploit the complementary properties of time-lapse seismic and gravity data.


2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
K. Breili ◽  
R. Hougen ◽  
D. I. Lysaker ◽  
O. C. D. Omang ◽  
B. Tangen

AbstractThe Norwegian Mapping Authority (NMA) has recently established a new gravity laboratory in Ny-Ålesund at Svalbard, Norway. The laboratory consists of three independent pillars and is part of the geodetic core station that is presently under construction at Brandal, approximately 1.5 km north of NMA’s old station. In anticipation of future use of the new gravity laboratory, we present benchmark gravity values, gravity gradients, and final coordinates of all new pillars. Test measurements indicate a higher noise level at Brandal compared to the old station. The increased noise level is attributed to higher sensitivity to wind.We have also investigated possible consequences of moving to Brandal when it comes to the gravitational signal of present-day ice mass changes and ocean tide loading. Plausible models representing ice mass changes at the Svalbard archipelago indicate that the gravitational signal at Brandal may differ from that at the old site with a size detectable with modern gravimeters. Users of gravity data from Ny-Ålesund should, therefore, be cautious if future observations from the new observatory are used to extend the existing gravity record. Due to its lower elevation, Brandal is significantly less sensitive to gravitational ocean tide loading. In the future, Brandal will be the prime site for gravimetry in Ny-Ålesund. This ensures gravity measurements collocated with space geodetic techniques like VLBI, SLR, and GNSS.


2020 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 100-117
Author(s):  
Viktor Szabó ◽  
Dorota Marjańska

AbstractGlobal satellite gravity measurements provide unique information regarding gravity field distribution and its variability on the Earth. The main cause of gravity changes is the mass transportation within the Earth, appearing as, e.g. dynamic fluctuations in hydrology, glaciology, oceanology, meteorology and the lithosphere. This phenomenon has become more comprehensible thanks to the dedicated gravimetric missions such as Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE), Challenging Minisatellite Payload (CHAMP) and Gravity Field and Steady-State Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE). From among these missions, GRACE seems to be the most dominating source of gravity data, sharing a unique set of observations from over 15 years. The results of this experiment are often of interest to geodesists and geophysicists due to its high compatibility with the other methods of gravity measurements, especially absolute gravimetry. Direct validation of gravity field solutions is crucial as it can provide conclusions concerning forecasts of subsurface water changes. The aim of this work is to present the issue of selection of filtration parameters for monthly gravity field solutions in RL06 and RL05 releases and then to compare them to a time series of absolute gravimetric data conducted in quasi-monthly measurements in Astro-Geodetic Observatory in Józefosław (Poland). The other purpose of this study is to estimate the accuracy of GRACE temporal solutions in comparison with absolute terrestrial gravimetry data and making an attempt to indicate the significance of differences between solutions using various types of filtration (DDK, Gaussian) from selected research centres.


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