Modeling of broadband airborne electromagnetic responses from saline environments

Abstract

The removal of vegetation for the development of nonirrigated agriculture and the associated increase in groundwater recharge and discharge has caused significant areas of salinization of surface soil and water resources in Australia. At least three types of salt profiles are known to indicate the relative magnitude of recharge. These profiles may be differentiated by their resistivity structure. Since a broadband airborne electromagnetic (AEM) method offers the possibility of readily obtaining resistivity soundings, modeling was carried out to investigate the ability of a broadband AEM system to distinguish different salt profile types. Salt profile types may be represented by a four‐layer resistivity model. The use of a broadband AEM system to distinguish the relative magnitude of the resistivity of a layer of high salt accumulation and the underlying layer forms the basis for efficiently identifying areas of high or low recharge. Where the resistivity of the underlying layer is greater than that of the salt accumulation, high recharge is indicated, and a lower resistivity of this layer implies low recharge. The response of each of the salt profile models was calculated in the frequency domain and then inverted back to a layered model. With noise added to the calculated responses, the inversion results show that the depth, thickness, and resistivity of a layer of high salt accumulation can be resolved by AEM measurements. Furthermore, the resistivity of this layer can be distinguished from the resistivity of the underlying layer. A high‐recharge profile may therefore be differentiated from a low‐recharge profile with AEM measurements. Since the quadrature component of the AEM response is relatively unaffected by noise caused by the primary field, the effect of using solely the quadrature component of the response was examined briefly as a second part of the AEM modeling investigation. It is found that simultaneous inversion of the quadrature part of the spatial components measured along the line of flight and in a vertical direction gives results similar to those when both the in‐phase and quadrature parts of these components are used in the inversion.