Regional Gravity Field Research Articles

SRBF_Soft: a Python-based open-source software for regional gravity field modeling using spherical radial basis functions based on the data-adaptive network design methodology

SRBF_Soft: a Python-based open-source software for regional gravity field modeling using spherical radial basis functions based on the data-adaptive network design methodology

Joint Interpretation of Magnetotelluric and Potential Field Data From North-Eastern Norrbotten, Sweden

Potential field data in databases of the Geological Survey of Sweden (SGU) combined with newly acquired broadband magnetotelluric data are used to map and interpret geological units and structures of a 200 km by 250 km area in the Paleoproterozoic Norrbotten ore province (northern Sweden, latitudes 66°–68.5° and longitudes 19°–24°). In order to achieve this, a new approach is proposed with respect to extracting and analysing the possible correlation between modelled physical properties as well as their patterns with respect to depth variation within the crust. In this study, we propose the use of a neural net self-organising map procedure (SOM) for simplification, data reduction, and domain classification of the models derived from independent 3-D geophysical inversion of magnetotelluric, gravity, and magnetic data. The crustal model of the electrical conductivity structure was obtained from previous 3-D inversion of the magnetotelluric data. Processing and 3-D inversion of the regional magnetic and gravity field data were performed using an open-source object-oriented code called SimPEG. The input data to the SOM analysis contain resistivity, magnetic susceptibility, and density model values within the Norrbotten area for some selected depth levels of the entire crust. The domain classification is discussed with respect to the geological boundaries and composition of the crust. Consistency between model domain classification and geological boundaries is observed in general but an apparent discrepancy is noted for some areas. The reason for the apparent discrepancy is likely related to that most geological boundaries represent surface features whereas the geophysical data includes information at depth.

Regional gravity field distribution over cratonic domains of the Indian shield: Implications for lithospheric evolution and destruction

• Detailed analysis of regional gravity field over Indian cratons. • Extremely low Bouguer gravity of −120 mGal associated with Dharwar Craton. • Gravity field is largely positive over the north Indian cratonic segments. • Cratons with positive gravity have thinner lithosphere and higher heat flow. The nature of crust and lithospheric mantle evolution of the Archean shields and their subsequent destruction through intraplate tectonic processes are important in understanding continental dynamics and resources. The Indian shield, which has remained dynamic throughout the past for more than three billion years of geological history, is unique in terms of its lithospheric architecture compared to other Archean terranes on the globe. It consists of five major cratons, the Dharwar, Singhbhum, Bundelkhand, Bastar and Aravalli, which are separated by active rift valleys, mega lineaments and sutures zones. Here, we present a detailed analysis of gravity field over these areas, and their possible relationship with lithospheric thickness variations. Our results show a large variation in residual gravity field among the different cratons. A highly negative anomaly of around -70 mGal occurs over the western part of the Dharwar Craton, beneath which the lithosphere is about 160–200 km thick. In comparison, the anomalies are conspicuously positive, reaching around (i) +10 mGal over Central Dharwar Craton, Eastern Ghats Belt and the eastern part of Singhbhum Craton, (ii) +35 mGal over the Nellore Schist and Aravalli-Delhi Fold Belts, and (iii) +60 to +70 mGal over eastern part of SGT. In these regions, the lithosphere is markedly thinner between 70 and 135 km. Such areas have been associated with episodic magmatism, moderately high heat flow and elevated Moho temperatures, indicating a large-scale upwarping of isotherms leading to lithospheric destruction to the tune of 100–150 km, caused by mechanical, thermal and chemical erosion. Our study confirms that many of the Archean cratons on the globe, like the Indian shield, have undergone substantial erosion of their roots through subsequent geotectonic processes.

Gravity anomaly and fine crustal structure in the middle segment of the Tan-Lu fault zone, eastern Chinese mainland

The middle segment of the Tan-Lu fault zone (MTLFZ) is a large-scale active fault zone in the eastern Chinese mainland, and the 1668 Tancheng M8.5 earthquake occurred in its eastern graben. In this study, wavelet-based multi-scale analysis, Moho inversion, and gravity profile modeling are utilized to invert the high-precision Bouguer gravity anomaly of the MTLFZ and adjacent areas, and the fine crustal structure and deformation features are analyzed to understand the deep seismogenic mechanism. The results indicate that the regional gravity field can be subdivided into five blocks. The MTLFZ, as the tectonic boundary, is a NNE-trending gentle gravity gradient zone or a high anomaly zone with the highest gradient value of 0.6 mGal/km. In plane, the sedimentary layer to the upper crust of the Tan-Lu fault zone (TLFZ) shows a gravity pattern of “two grabens and one horst” on the north of Suqian, and the middle-lower crust is characterized by a long and narrow intermittent low anomaly zone, while the uppermost mantle is displays an accumulation of high anomaly materials. In profile, the TLFZ cuts through the Moho interface to the upper mantle and serves as a channel for upwelling of high density materials into the lower crust from mantle, where density value of lower crust is nearly 3.0 g/cm3, which is significantly higher than both the sides. The regional Moho depth increases from 30.8 km in the east to 36.0 km in the west, and an abrupt change is observed along the TLFZ, where the Moho interface is severely uplifted in the Juxian-Tancheng and Suqian-Jiashan areas. The gravity results reveal several NW or NWW active faults on the west side of TLFZ that intersect with it, which decreases the stress of the western graben. In contrast, the eastern graben is relatively rigid due to the lack of intersecting active faults. Moreover, the deep fault of the TLFZ displays a similar declination as the shallow branch faults of the eastern graben with little distortion, so the stress acts more easily and the hot mantle materials upwell more efficiently to induce major earthquakes in the eastern graben. It is interpreted that the 1668 Tancheng earthquake occurred through this mechanism: the Moho interface is strongly uplifted in the Tancheng area where the mantle material upwelled into the crust along the TLFZ, and the strain continued to accumulate due to crustal structure features of the eastern graben.

Application of the nonlinear optimisation in regional gravity field modelling using spherical radial base functions

The gravity field is a signature of the mass distribution and interior structure of the Earth, in addition to all its geodetic applications especially geoid determination and vertical datum unification. Determination of a regional gravity field model is an important subject and needs to be investigated and developed. Here, the spherical radial basis functions (SBFs) are applied in two scenarios for this purpose: interpolating the gravity anomalies and solving the fundamental equation of physical geodesy for geoid or disturbing potential determination, which has the possibility of being verified by the Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS)/levelling data. Proper selections of the number of SBFs and optimal location of the applied SBFs are important factors to increase the accuracy of estimation. In this study, the gravity anomaly interpolation based on the SBFs is performed by Gauss-Newton optimisation with truncated singular value decomposition, and a Quasi-Newton method based on line search to solve the minimisation problems with a small number of iterations is developed. In order to solve the fundamental equation of physical geodesy by the SBFs, the truncated Newton optimisation is applied as the Hessian matrix of the objective function is not always positive definite. These two scenarios are applied on the terrestrial free-air gravity anomalies over the topographically rough area of Auvergne. The obtained accuracy for the interpolated gravity anomaly model is 1.7 mGal with the number of point-masses about 30% of the number of observations, and 1.5 mGal in the second scenario where the number of used kernels is also 30%. These accuracies are root mean square errors (RMSE) of the differences between predicted and observed gravity anomalies at check points. Moreover, utilising the optimal constructed model from the second scenario, the RMSE of 9 cm is achieved for the differences between the gravimetric height anomalies derived from the model and the geometric height anomalies from GNSS/levelling points.

Recovering Marine Gravity Over the Gulf of Guinea From Multi-Satellite Sea Surface Heights

A regional gravity field product, comprising vertical deflections and gravity anomalies, of the Gulf of Guinea (15°W to 5°E, 4°S to 4°N) has been developed from sea surface heights (SSH) of five altimetry missions. Though the remove-restore technique was adopted, the deflections of the vertical were computed directly from the SSH without the influence of a global geopotential model. The north-component of vertical deflections was more accurate than the east-component by almost three times. Analysis of results showed each satellite can contribute almost equally in resolving the north-component. This is attributable to the nearly northern inclinations of the various satellites. However, Cryosat-2, Jason-1/GM, and SARAL/AltiKa contributed the most in resolving the east-component. We attribute this to the superior spatial resolution of Cryosat-2, the lower inclination of Jason-1/GM, and the high range accuracy of the Ka-band of SARAL/AltiKa. Weights of 0.687 and 0.313 were, respectively, assigned to the north and east components in order to minimize their non-uniform accuracy effect on the resultant gravity anomaly model. Histogram of computed gravity anomalies compared well with those from renowned models: DTU13, SIOv28, and EGM2008. It averagely deviates from the reference models by −0.33 mGal. Further assessment was done by comparing it with a quadratically adjusted shipborne free-air gravity anomalies. After some data cleaning, observations in shallow waters, as well as some ship tracks were still unreliable. By excluding the observations in shallow waters, the derived gravity field model compares well in ocean depths deeper than 2,000 m.

Gravity field characteristics and seismogenic model in North China

In this paper, we use a Bayesian principle-based gravity leveling method to uniformly process 16 periods of land-based mobile gravity observations from 2009-2017 in North China, and study the dynamic characteristics of the regional gravity field in conjunction with four earthquakes （M≥4.5） that have struck the studied area since 2009. Further, we study the characteristics of the isostatic gravity anomaly in North China, and analyze the relationship between regional gravity field changes and deep density structure based on the Bouguer gravity anomaly, sedimentary sequences gravity anomaly and Moho gravity anomaly in the studied area to characterize the three-dimensional density structure in North China. The results show that, the four earthquakes （M≥4.5） in the studied area in recent years have been located near the contours of the regional differential gravity field and the zero-value of the cumulative gravity field, the abnormally shifting gradient zones and the bends of the gradient zones, the unbalanced zones in the deep structure where the theoretical equilibrium thickness differs from theactual crustal thickness, and the high and low densities of the three-dimensional density structure inside the transition zone.

Subsurface Structure Models Of Sumbawa Island And Flores Back Arc Thrust Based On Gravity Data

Based on the BMKG report on Wednesday, July 29, 2018, at 05.47 WIB, an earthquake with a magnitude of 6.4 SR occurred at the epicenter at a depth of 24 km and was 47 km northeast of the island of Lombok. They are allegedly originating from the Back Arc Thrust Flores, the interaction between the Indo-Australian Plate and the Eurasian plate. This study aims to analyze the subsurface structure of the island of Sumbawa and Flores sea based on the distribution of density values. The analysis was carried out by modeling the subsurface structure based on regional gravity field anomaly data. The data used is secondary data downloaded from the topex.ucsd.edu page 18,400 measuring points. Data processing consists of data correction, separation of anomalies, determination of the Second Vertical Derivative (SVD) value, and 3D and 2D inversion modeling. The data corrections performed are Bouguer correction and terrain correction to produce the total gravity anomaly value. Upward continuation is used to separate regional anomalies and residual anomalies. Analysis of the Second Vertical Derivative (SVD) value was carried out to identify rock contact positions and fault structures. The 3D inversion modeling is done by making a mesh model, and to get a 2D cross-section, six slices are used in the 3D model. The results of the 3D model and 2D cross-section, namely the island of Sumbawa to the Back Arc Thrust zone of Flores, consists of 3 main layers comprised of the upper crust with a density of 2.29 gr/cc - 2.63 gr/cc, the middle crust with a density of 2.64 gr/cc - 2.90 gr/cc, and the lower crust with a density of 2.91 gr/cc - 3.14 gr/cc, and based on the model and SVD value, it shows that the Flores back fault, the reverse fault type, starts at a depth of ± 26 km

Integrated 3D geological modelling of the northern Upper Rhine Graben by joint inversion of gravimetry and magnetic data

The crystalline basement of the Upper Rhine Graben is a major target for deep geothermal exploration due to the generally high reservoir temperatures and the increased radiogenic heat production. The geothermal potential is strongly dependent on the lithology because mainly the thermal but also the hydraulic properties are affected by the rock type. For this reason, the so far most detailed 3D model of the basement in the northern Upper Rhine Graben was developed based on existing structural models, in particular the Hesse 3D 2.0 and GeORG models. Since only a few boreholes fully penetrate the thick sediment cover, additional magnetic and gravity data provided valuable information on the geometry of the deep horizons. To interpret the Bouguer anomalies reasonably with respect to the crystalline basement, the regional gravity field and sedimentary effect were subtracted from the observed data. In comparison to the commonly applied deterministic modelling approaches, a stochastic joint inversion of the gravity and magnetic anomalies was performed that utilizes the principles of a Monte-Carlo-Markov-Chain simulation. For an appropriate attribution of the model units, existing petrophysical databases of the region have been used and in addition, the magnetic susceptibility of more than 430 rock samples was measured. High-resolution voxel models of the density and susceptibility distribution were generated as a result of the inversion, which allow conclusions about the crustal composition under the sedimentary formations. An interpretative map of the basement geology, derived from the inversion results, is presented.

Processing and interpretation of full tensor gravity anomalies of Southern Main Ethiopian Rift

The study area is situated in the Southern Main Ethiopian Rift being bounded within the limit of 37o00″0′-38o50′00″E and 5o50′00″-7o00′00″N. It is well known that the complex geological structure of the Main Ethiopian Rift has attracted intense attention so far and numerous geophysical investigations have been performed using potential field data-sets in Central and Northern Main Ethiopian Rift with the exception of the Southern Main Ethiopian Rift which is poorly constrained. Analysis of Full Tensor Gravity anomalies helps in understanding of the nature of shallow subsurface structural features and has a paramount importance in building general understanding of subtle details about subsurface geology of the area.Separation of regional and residual gravity field is performed using upward continuation filtering technique. The residual gravity anomaly caused by local structures and anomalous body delineated four sub-basins with low amplitude response which is in agreement with the vertical gravity gradient anomaly (Gzz) and tilt derivative horizontal (TDX) that clearly outlined and characterize edges of the sub-basins. The sub-basins delineated are the northern and southern Abaya, Chamo and Gelana basins. The tilt angle method which is used to delineate major subsurface structures and determine the source depth results showed that the area was affected by different lineament trending NE-SW, N–S, NNE-SSW, NW-SE and E-W, directional analysis performed indicates that the dominant trend is in agreement with the regional fault orientations. The estimated depth to the top of the lineaments on average varies from 0.9 km to 3.1 km and it is relatively deeper in the basins compared to the surrounding areas giving clues to the amount of sediment infill.

Regional geoid determination in Tierra del Fuego including GPS levelling

A regional geoid model for the Argentine part of the Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego, established in previous works on the basis of GPS levelling, suffers a lack of observation data in the remote south-western investigation area. In order to improve the data distribution in this region, the mean lake level of Lago Fagnano has been regarded as a natural indicator for the local geoid. Using a GPS buoy and pressure tide gauges, a method to determine the mean lake surface topography with respect to the ellipsoid has been developed. It is shown that the obtained lake level geometry is essentially controlled by the regional gravity field. The derived information on the mean lake level has been included in the geoid model, which results in a more detailed and plausible representation of the regional geoid.

Strategy for the realisation of the International Height Reference System (IHRS)

In 2015, the International Association of Geodesy defined the International Height Reference System (IHRS) as the conventional gravity field-related global height system. The IHRS is a geopotential reference system co-rotating with the Earth. Coordinates of points or objects close to or on the Earth’s surface are given by geopotential numbers C(P) referring to an equipotential surface defined by the conventional value W0 = 62,636,853.4 m2 s−2, and geocentric Cartesian coordinates X referring to the International Terrestrial Reference System (ITRS). Current efforts concentrate on an accurate, consistent, and well-defined realisation of the IHRS to provide an international standard for the precise determination of physical coordinates worldwide. Accordingly, this study focuses on the strategy for the realisation of the IHRS; i.e. the establishment of the International Height Reference Frame (IHRF). Four main aspects are considered: (1) methods for the determination of IHRF physical coordinates; (2) standards and conventions needed to ensure consistency between the definition and the realisation of the reference system; (3) criteria for the IHRF reference network design and station selection; and (4) operational infrastructure to guarantee a reliable and long-term sustainability of the IHRF. A highlight of this work is the evaluation of different approaches for the determination and accuracy assessment of IHRF coordinates based on the existing resources, namely (1) global gravity models of high resolution, (2) precise regional gravity field modelling, and (3) vertical datum unification of the local height systems into the IHRF. After a detailed discussion of the advantages, current limitations, and possibilities of improvement in the coordinate determination using these options, we define a strategy for the establishment of the IHRF including data requirements, a set of minimum standards/conventions for the determination of potential coordinates, a first IHRF reference network configuration, and a proposal to create a component of the International Gravity Field Service (IGFS) dedicated to the maintenance and servicing of the IHRS/IHRF.

Comparison of Seismicity and Average Focal Mechanisms of Javakheti Highland Earthquakes with Regional Gravitational-Field Anomalies

This article provides a comparative analysis of the anomalies in the values of the regional gravity field with the spatial distribution of the earthquake epicenters in the Javakheti Highland. It is shown that the epicenters of earthquakes with magnitudes M ≥ 4 are confined to the gradient zones, where significant relative minima and maxima of the anomalies of the gravitational field in the Bouguer reduction are observed. The average mechanisms of earthquakes in individual seismogenic blocks of the region were obtained for the observation period from 1971 to 2015, which indicate that normal faulting is the dominant type of movements in the earthquake foci. The result is explained by the processes occurring in the subcrustal layer and leading to the decompaction of matter in the uplift zones, which is one of the main factors in the occurrence of negative gravity anomalies in the area under consideration.

Regional gravity field refinement for (quasi-) geoid determination based on spherical radial basis functions in Colorado

This study presents a solution of the ‘1 cm Geoid Experiment’ (Colorado Experiment) using spherical radial basis functions (SRBFs). As the only group using SRBFs among the fourteen participated institutions from all over the world, we highlight the methodology of SRBFs in this paper. Detailed explanations are given regarding the settings of the four most important factors that influence the performance of SRBFs in gravity field modeling, namely (1) the choosing bandwidth, (2) the locations of the SRBFs, (3) the type of the SRBFs as well as (4) the extensions of the data zone for reducing the edge effect. Two types of basis functions covering the same spectral range are used for the terrestrial and the airborne measurements, respectively. The non-smoothing Shannon function is applied to the terrestrial data to avoid the loss of spectral information. The cubic polynomial (CuP) function which has smoothing features is applied to the airborne data as a low-pass filter for filtering the high-frequency noise. Although the idea of combining different SRBFs for different observations was proven in theory to be possible, it is applied to real data for the first time, in this study. The RMS error of our height anomaly result along the GSVS17 benchmarks w.r.t the validation data (which is the mean results of the other contributions in the ‘Colorado Experiment’) drops by 5% when combining the Shannon function for the terrestrial data and the CuP function for the airborne data, compared to those obtained by using the Shannon function for both the two data sets. This improvement indicates the validity and benefits of using different SRBFs for different observation types. Global gravity model (GGM), topographic model, the terrestrial gravity data, as well as the airborne gravity data are combined, and the contribution of each data set to the final solution is discussed. By adding the terrestrial data to the GGM and the topographic model, the RMS error of the height anomaly result w.r.t the validation data drops from 4 to 1.8 cm, and it is further reduced to 1 cm by including the airborne data. Comparisons with the mean results of all the contributions show that our height anomaly and geoid height solutions at the GSVS17 benchmarks have an RMS error of 1.0 cm and 1.3 cm, respectively; and our height anomaly results give an RMS value of 1.6 cm in the whole study area, which are all the smallest among the participants.

Determination of the Regularization Parameter to Combine Heterogeneous Observations in Regional Gravity Field Modeling

Various types of heterogeneous observations can be combined within a parameter estimation process using spherical radial basis functions (SRBFs) for regional gravity field refinement. In this process, regularization is in most cases inevitable, and choosing an appropriate value for the regularization parameter is a crucial issue. This study discusses the drawbacks of two frequently used methods for choosing the regularization parameter, which are the L-curve method and the variance component estimation (VCE). To overcome their drawbacks, two approaches for the regularization parameter determination are proposed, which combine the L-curve method and VCE. The first approach, denoted as “VCE-Lc”, starts with the calculation of the relative weights between the observation techniques by means of VCE. Based on these weights, the L-curve method is applied to determine the regularization parameter. In the second approach, called “Lc-VCE”, the L-curve method determines first the regularization parameter, and it is set to be fixed during the calculation of the relative weights between the observation techniques from VCE. To evaluate and compare the performance of the two proposed methods with the L-curve method and VCE, all these four methods are applied in six study cases using four types of simulated observations in Europe, and their modeling results are compared with the validation data. The RMS errors (w.r.t the validation data) obtained by VCE-Lc and Lc-VCE are smaller than those obtained from the L-curve method and VCE in all the six cases. VCE-Lc performs the best among these four tested methods, no matter if using SRBFs with smoothing or non-smoothing features. These results prove the benefits of the two proposed methods for regularization parameter determination when different data sets are to be combined.

Refinement of a gravimetric geoid model for Japan using GOCE and an updated regional gravity field model

We developed a refined gravimetric geoid model for Japan on a 1 × 1.5 arc-minute (2 km) grid from a GOCE-based satellite-only global geopotential model and a regional gravity field model updated in this study. First, we have constructed a regional gravity field model for Japan using updated gravity datasets together with a residual terrain model: 323,431 land gravity data, 77,389 shipborne marine gravity data, and Sandwell’s v28.1 altimetry-derived global marine gravity model. Then, the geoid was determined with the gravity field model. The methodology for gravimetric geoid determination was based on the remove–compute–restore technique with Helmert’s second method of condensation of topography (Stokes–Helmert scheme). Here, the hybrid Meissl–Molodensky modified spheroidal Stokes kernel was employed to minimize the truncation error under an appropriate combination of different kinds of gravity data. In addition, a high-resolution GSI-DEM on a 0.4 × 0.4 arc-second (10 m) grid, together with the SRTM-DEM on a 7.5 × 11.25 arc-second (250 m) grid, was utilized for precisely applying terrain correction to the regional gravity field model. Consequently, we created a gravimetric geoid model for Japan, consistent with 971 GNSS/leveling geoid heights distributed over the four main islands of Japan with a standard deviation of 5.7 cm, showing a considerable improvement by 2.3 cm over the previous model (JGEOID2008). However, there remain some areas with large discrepancies between the computed and GNSS/leveling geoid heights in northern Japan (Hokkaido), mountainous areas in central Japan, and some coastal regions. Since terrestrial gravity data are especially sparse in these areas, we speculated that the largeness of the geoid discrepancies there could be partly attributed to the insufficient coverage and accuracy of gravity data. The Geospatial Information Authority of Japan has started airborne gravity surveys to be covered over the Japanese Islands, and in future, we plan to develop a geoid model for Japan further accurately by incorporating airborne gravity data to come.

Inversion and Validation of Improved Marine Gravity Field Recovery in South China Sea by Incorporating HY-2A Altimeter Waveform Data

HaiYang-2A (HY-2A, where ‘Haiyang’ means ‘Ocean’ in Chinese) has provided reliable sea surface height observations for gravity with uniform ocean data coverage on a global scale for more than 8 years, particularly with denser across track sampling during the geodetic mission since March 2016. This paper aims at modeling and evaluating the regional marine gravity field at 1′×1′ resolution by incorporating HY-2A altimeter waveform data from 7 complete 168-day cycles in the geodetic mission phase. Initial evaluation indicates that, firstly, the measurements in the geodetic mission stay at a consistent accuracy level with observations at the start-of-life stage according to statistics of discrepancies at crossover points cycle by cycle. Secondly, range precision improvement can be achieved using a two-pass weighted least-squares retracker. Thirdly, a downsampling procedure combined with a low-pass filter is designed for HY-2A 20 Hz data to obtain 5 Hz measurements with enhanced precision. We calculate the 1′×1′ marine gravity field model over the South China Sea area by using the EGM2008 model as a reference field with the remove/restore method. The verifications with published models and shipborne gravimetric data show that HY-2A GM data is capable of improving marine gravity field modeling. Results show slightly higher accuracy than other models with similar input datasets but not including HY-2A. The accuracy is also compared with the latest DTU17 and SIO V27.1 model.

Upward continuation and polynomial trend analysis as a gravity data decomposition, case study at Ziway-Shala basin, central Main Ethiopian rift

The first task in quantitative interpretation of a gravity data is separation of the Bouguer anomaly into its regional and residual components which are respectively related to deep and shallow subsurface geology. The decomposition process is subjective and non-unique as there is no single best approach to approximate the low frequency signature. For example, the use of spectral analysis and upward continuation require the wise choice of slope change location and continuation height respectively, which could be chosen differently by different researchers. This requires a need to work on more than one method and select the best to be applied for a given study area. The “best” choice is made based on the anomaly signature of the underlying geology. In this research, the most frequently used methods such as upward continuation and trend surface analysis methods are used and compared to approximate the regional field in Central Main Ethiopian rift bounded between 38000′-39030′E and 7000′-8030′N. The upward continuation height and the order of trend polynomial surface are first chosen, to approximate the regional gravity field signal. Accordingly, an upward continuation height of 6km and first order polynomial trend surface are chosen to be appropriate. Comparison of the two methods shows that the upward continuation technique reflects the shallow source anomalies of the area better than that of the first order linear trend surface. This outcome is verified against the result obtained based on the first vertical derivative method, spectral analysis depth estimation method, well-log data and surface geology of the area. It is therefore recommended to consider the various existing filtering techniques and choose the best candidate for the separation of the regional and residual components of the observed field.

Regional and Residual Gravity Anomaly Separation Using Singular Spectrum based Frequency Filtering Methods: A Case Study of Shallow Subsurface Modeling from Nagpur, India

We present here the application of a single and multichannel singular spectrum analysis (SSA)-based data filtering algorithm for regional and residual gravity field separation. Initially, the single-channel SSA method was tested on synthetic gravity profile data generated using Gravity and Magnetics Modelling System (GM-SYS), a gravity modeling software, for a sedimentary basin structure corrupted with Gaussian white noise and compared with the convnetional Fast Fourier transform (FFT)-based wave number (non-data adaptive) and discrete wavelet transform (semi-data-adaptive) filtering approaches. The comparative results show that the residual filtering of gravity data using the SSA method produces less/minimal artifacts compared to FFT-based wave number filtering and wavelet filtering methods. Following the synthetic examples, we further employed multichannel SSA-based frequency filtering on 2D gridded gravity data from Umred, Nagpur district, Maharashtra, India, to separate the residual anomaly for modelling the shallow subsurface structures. The modelled depth sections of two mutually perpendicular profiles suggest the presence of alluvium, Lameta, Kamthi and Barakar formations with varying thicknesses. The formations identified from the models show a clear match with the local geology and nearby borehole information. We suggest that the single and multichannel SSA based frequency filtering are robust approaches for separating regional and residual components from gravity anomalies.

Bouguer gravity field of the Tuscan Archipelago (central Italy)

ABSTRACT In this paper, we present a new Bouguer gravity map of the Northern Tuscan offshore (central Italy), based on original gravity data acquired on the islands of the Tuscan Archipelago. Our dataset integrates 274 unpublished gravity field measurements with 126 available marine gravity data of the northern Tyrrhenian Sea. The Bouguer anomaly map shows a westward and southward increase of the regional gravity field associated with the uplift of the Moho boundary from central Apennines towards the Tyrrhenian Sea. At a local scale, several Bouguer anomalies are well associated with the igneous plutons of the Elba, Montecristo and Capraia islands, as a result of a deep density contrast between the granitoid intrusive rocks and the embedding metamorphic basement. The presented Bouguer anomaly map represents a useful tool for future studies of the complex geological and geodynamical setting of the Tuscan Archipelago and of the buried and deep igneous structures.