Efficiency of a marine towed electrical resistivity method

Abstract

In contrast to marine sediments, because of large electrical resistivity anomalies found in sulfide deposits and methane hydrates, resistivity measurements such as marine towed electrical resistivity (MTER) might be a feasible method for discovering those natural minerals. To determine the feasibility of the MTER method we examined arrays consisting of a pole electrical dipole (PED), vertical electrical dipole (VED) and horizontal electrical dipole (HED). The VED array showed a maximum difference in electric fields of 36% and 105% in the resistive and conductive models, respectively, while the PED and HED arrays yielded worse results of around 13% to 19%, respectively. The VED array showed a higher difference in electric fields than both the HED and PED arrays in the two models. Therefore, we suggest that a VED array with a large electrical current would be most conducive leading to the discovery of such minerals during MTER surveys.