A comparison of different radiomagnetotelluric data inversion methods for buried waste sites

Abstract

This study deals with two-dimensional (2D) inversions of synthetic and observed radiomagnetotelluric (RMT) data on typical buried conductive waste sites in Europe, and with the practical aspects of different inversion algorithms. In the inversion calculations, we used smoothing and L2-norm stabilizers and compared the results. The resolution of the geometry of the highly conductive waste site, in particular, was investigated. In the inversion with the L2-norm stabilizer, we used the least-squares solution with singular value decomposition (LSSVD) and conjugate gradient (CG), whereas only the conjugate gradient solver was used in the 2D-inversion with the smoothing stabilizer. The inversion results of the synthetic data showed a better resolution of the geometry of the highly conductive waste site when a L2-norm stabilizer was applied in the inversion; in particular, a better detection of the bottom of the waste deposit was achieved. Additional model studies were carried out using synthetic RMT data in order to investigate the 2D inversion of RMT data observed on a 3D structure; these studies showed that the use of TM mode data yields a better resolution of the structure than joint inversion of TE and TM modes. 2D inversions of RMT data on a waste site near Cologne showed that the inversion of the TM mode could resolve well the geometry, especially the bottom of the waste site, if information about the background conductivity structure was available. In this case study, inversion with the L2-norm stabilizer produced a sharper image of the waste site than inversion with the smoothing stabilizer, as indicated also by the inversion study that used synthetic data.