Enhancing ridges in potential field data
Gordon R. J. CooperSchool of Geosciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. Email: gordon.cooper@geosciences.wits.ac.za
Exploration Geophysics 41(2) 170-173 https://doi.org/10.1071/EG09038
Submitted: 17 August 2009 Accepted: 14 December 2009 Published: 7 June 2010
Abstract
The identification of lineaments in potential field data is an important step in many interpretation projects. A method of extracting ridges and valleys based on maxima and minima of a balanced plan curvature dataset is suggested here. The method is compared with other ridge detection algorithms and is applied to aeromagnetic and gravity datasets from South Africa. Source code in Matlab format is available from the author on request.
Key words: curvature, edge detection, lineaments.
Acknowledgements
Mr. Gordon Chunnett and Anglo Platinum are thanked for permission to use the aeromagnetic data shown in Figure 3. The Council for Geoscience, Pretoria, are thanked for permission to use the gravity data shown in Figure 4. The NRF (Pretoria) is thanked for funding this project.
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