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RESEARCH ARTICLE

3D gravity inversion with Euler deconvolution as a priori information

Hyoungrae Rim 1 Yeong-Sue Park 1 3 Mutaek Lim 1 Sung Bon Koo 1 Byung Doo Kwon 2
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1 Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources, 30 Gajeong-dong, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon 305-350, Korea.

2 Department of Earth Sciences Education, Seoul National University, San 56-1, Sillim-dong, Gwank-gu, Seoul 151-742, Korea.

3 Corresponding author. Email: yspark@kigam.re.kr

Exploration Geophysics 38(1) 44-49 https://doi.org/10.1071/EG07010
Submitted: 3 November 2006  Accepted: 10 January 2007   Published: 5 April 2007

Abstract

It is difficult to obtain high-resolution images by 3D gravity inversion, because the problem is extremely underdetermined – there are too many model parameters. In order to reduce the number of model parameters we propose a 3D gravity inversion scheme utilising Euler deconvolution as a priori information. The essential point of this scheme is the reduction of the nonuniqueness of solutions by restricting the inversion space with the help of Euler deconvolution. We carry out a systematic exploration of the growing body process, but only in the restricted space within a certain radius of the Euler solutions. We have tested our method with synthetic gravity data, and also applied it to a real dataset, to delineate underground cavities in a limestone area. We found that we obtained a more reasonable subsurface density image by means of this combination between the Euler solution and the inversion process.

Key words: Euler deconvolution, gravity inversion, nonuniqueness.


Acknowledgment

This work was supported by the Basic Research Project ‘Development of fusion techniques of precise subsurface imaging’ of the Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources (KIGAM) funded by the Ministry of Science and Technology of Korea. The authors thank reviewers Yasukuni Okubo and Heuisoon Lee as for their thoughtful comments. We also thank Lindsay Thomas for kindly assistance with improving the quality of this paper.


References

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