A comprehensive study of including structural orientation information in geophysical inversions

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate options for incorporating structural orientation information into under-determined inversions in a deterministic framework (i.e. minimization of an objective function). The first approach involves a rotation of an orthogonal system of smoothness operators, for which there are some important practical details in the implementation that avoid asymmetric inversion results. The second approach relies on addition of linear constraints into the optimization problem, which is solved using a logarithmic barrier method. A 2-D synthetic example is provided involving a synclinal magnetic structure and we invert two sets of real survey data in 3-D (one gravity data, the other magnetic data). Using those examples, we demonstrate how different types of orientation information can be incorporated into inversions. Incorporating orientation information can yield bodies that have expected aspect ratios and axis orientations. Physical property increase or decrease in particular directions can also be obtained. © Journal compilation © 2009 RAS.