Relationship of gravity, magnetic, and self‐potential anomalies and their application to mineral exploration

Abstract

In mineral exploration, inferences about source characteristics can be made with reduced ambiguity by using an integrated approach to the problem. For example, a positive gravity anomaly would indicate the presence of an anomalous source of relatively greater density than the country rock. But the presence of a joint gravity and magnetic high, interpreted to be from the same source, could be used to indicate the presence of a mafic igneous intrusive. Interrelationships between geophysical anomalies are important and necessary to their joint interpretation. Poisson9s relationship between gravity and magnetic potentials has been used extensively to convert magnetic anomalies to pseudoogravity anomalies (Baranov, 1957) and in the joint interpretation of gravity and magnetic data (Chandler et al., 1981). In this paper, I derive the relationships between self-potential (SP) anomalies and gravity and magnetic anomalies. I use observed magnetic and SP data to illustrate the theoretical relationship.