Abstract
The exploitation of gravity fields in order to retrieve information about subsurface geological structures is sometimes considered a second rank method, in favour of other geophysical methods, such as seismic, able to provide a high resolution detailed picture of the main geological horizons. Within the current work we prove, through a realistic synthetic case study, that the gravity field, thanks to the availability of freely of charge high resolution global models and to the improvements in the gravity inversion methods, can represent a valid and cheap tool to complete and enhance geophysical modelling of the Earth’s crust. Three tests were carried out: In the first one a simple two-layer problem was considered, while in tests two and three we considered two more realistic scenarios in which the availability on the study area of constraints derived from 3D or 2D seismic surveys were simulated. In all the considered test cases, in which we try to simulate real-life scenarios, the gravity field, inverted by means of an advanced Bayesian technique, was able to obtain a final solution closer to the (simulated) real model than the assumed a priori information, typically halving the uncertainties in the geometries of the main geological horizons with respect to the initial model.
Highlights
The study of the Earth’s crust by means of indirect geophysical methods, the so called potential field methods, is crucial for a great variety of scientific and industrial activities
We developed a realistic synthetic case study, which can be in general exploited in order to test gravity inversion algorithms
The developed dataset simulates a 3D volume in the Mediterranean area over a region of 3 · 105 m × 2 · 105 m up to a depth of 35,000 m and with a spatial resolution of 1500 m in the x and y directions
Summary
The study of the Earth’s crust by means of indirect geophysical methods, the so called potential field methods, is crucial for a great variety of scientific and industrial activities.
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