Geoelectric dimensionality in complex geological areas: application to the Spanish Betic Chain

Abstract

Rotational invariants of the magnetotelluric impedance tensor may be used to obtain information on the geometry of underlying geological structures. The set of invariants proposed by Weaver (2000) allows the determination of a suitable dimensionality for the modelling of observed data. The application of the invariants to real data must take into account the errors in the data and also the fact that geoelectric structures in the Earth will not exactly fit 1-D, 2-D or simple 3-D models. In this work we propose a method to estimate the dimensionality of geoelectric structures based on the rotational invariants, bearing in mind the experimental error of real data. A data set from the Betic Chain (Spain) is considered. We compare the errors of the invariants estimated by different approaches: classical error propagation, generation of random Gaussian noise and bootstrap resampling, and we investigate the matter of the threshold value to be used in the determination of dimensionality. We conclude that the errors of the invariants can be properly estimated by classical error propagation, but the generation of random values is better to ensure stability in the errors of strike direction and distortion parameters. The use of a threshold value between 0.1 and 0.15 is recommended for real data of medium to high quality. The results for the Betic Chain show that the general behaviour is 3-D with a disposition of 2-D structures, which may be correlated with the nature of the crust of the region.