Structural interpretation of potential field data using the enhancement techniques: a case study

Abstract

The enhancement techniques of potential field data are commonly used to detect the boundary locations of geological structures. There are many different techniques for estimating the source boundaries. Through synthetic examples and Bouguer data from the southern Red Sea, we have evaluated the performance of 15 enhancement techniques. The findings show that the tilt angle of horizontal gradient (TAHG) and fast sigmoid (FSED) techniques perform better than other techniques under almost all scenarios. Moreover, these two techniques can avoid producing false structures or connected structures as other techniques. The extracted lineaments from the TAHG and FSED were compared with surface faults of the study area. As a result, major differences are caused by rifting effect on the oceanic crust. The obtained results provide valuable information to better understand the structural features of the southern Red Sea and to introduce a more reliable structural interpretation.