THREE-DIMENSIONAL DENSITY MODEL OF THE EARTH’S CRUST OF THE TERRITORY OF THE REPUBLIC OF NIGER

The paper considers the results of calculation of the three-dimensional density model of the Earth’s crust for the territory of the Republic of Niger in conditions of incomplete initial geological and geophysical information. A brief description of the geological structure of the research region is given and the task of the study is formulated. The initial data set of density modeling is described, including: the anomalous gravity field, the initial model of the medium, the constraints on the desired solution, and the weight functions of redistribution of field incompatibilities. Inversion of the anomalous gravity field was performed in a three-dimensional formulation for a regular grid with a 25×25 km spacing in the plan and 14 layers of irregular vertical grid. The density model of the crystalline crust obtained by solving the inverse problem was combined with a priori data on the density of the upper mantle layer and the previously constructed layered model of the sedimentary cover of the region. The main features of the density model of the Earth’s crust are considered and its density heterogeneities are compared with the regional geological and tectonic data. The leading role of young structures of the West African rift System and their relationship with density inhomogeneities in the lower and middle crust of the territory of the Republic of Niger was noted.

High resolution Slovak Bouguer gravity anomaly map and its enhanced derivative transformations: new possibilities for interpretation of anomalous gravity fields

The paper deals with the revision and enrichment of the present gravimetric database of the Slovak Republic. The output of this process is a new version of the complete Bouguer anomaly (CBA) field on our territory. Thanks to the taking into account of more accurate terrain corrections, this field has significantly higher quality and higher resolution capabilities. The excellent features of this map will allow us to re-evaluate and improve the qualitative interpretation of the gravity field when researching the structural and tectonic geology of the Western Carpathian lithosphere. In the contribution we also analyse the field of the newCBAbased on the properties of various transformed fields – in particular the horizontal gradient, which by its local maximums defines important density boundaries in the lateral direction. All original and new transformed maps make a significant contribution to improving the geological interpretation of theCBAfield. Except for the horizontal gradient field, we are also interested in a new special transformation ofTDXAS, which excellently separates various detected anomalies of gravity field and improves their lateral delimitation.

Removing Regional Trends in Microgravity in Complex Environments: Testing on 3D Model and Field Investigations in the Eastern Dead Sea Coast (Jordan)

Microgravity investigations are now recognized as a powerful tool for subsurface imaging and especially for the localization of underground karsts. However numerous natural (geological), technical, and environmental factors interfere with microgravity survey processing and interpretation. One of natural factors that causes the most disturbance in complex geological environments is the influence of regional trends. In the Dead Sea coastal areas the influence of regional trends can exceed residual gravity effects by some tenfold. Many widely applied methods are unable to remove regional trends with sufficient accuracy. We tested number of transformation methods (including computing gravity field derivatives, self-adjusting and adaptive filtering, Fourier series, wavelet, and other procedures) on a 3D model (complicated by randomly distributed noise), and field investigations were carried out in Ghor Al-Haditha (the eastern side of the Dead Sea in Jordan). We show that the most effective methods for regional trend removal (at least for the theoretical and field cases here) are the bilinear saddle and local polynomial regressions. Application of these methods made it possible to detect the anomalous gravity effect from buried targets in the theoretical model and to extract the local gravity anomaly at the Ghor Al-Haditha site. The local anomaly was utilized for 3D gravity modeling to construct a physical-geological model (PGM).