Predicting gravity and sediment thickness in Afghanistan

Abstract

The US Naval Research Laboratory conducted comprehensive high-altitude (7 km above mean sea level) aero-geophysical surveys over Afghanistan in 2006 (Rampant Lion I). The surveys were done in collaboration with the US Geological Survey and upon the request of Islamic Republic of Afghanistan Ministry of Mines. In this study, we show that a best fitting admittance between topography and airborne gravity in western Afghanistan can be used to predict airborne gravity for the no-data area of eastern Afghanistan where the mountains are too high to conduct airborne surveys, due to the threat of ground fire. The differences between the airborne and the predicted gravity along a tie-track through the no-data area were found to be within ±12 mGal range with rms difference 7.3 mGal, while those between the predicted gravity from a simple Airy model (with compensation depth of 32 km and crustal density of 2.67 g cm-3) and the airborne gravity were within ±22 mGal range with rms difference 10.3 mGal. A combined airborne free-air anomaly has been constructed by merging the predicted gravity with the airborne data. We also demonstrate that sediment thickness can be estimated for basin areas where surface topography and airborne free-air anomaly profiles do not showa correlation presumably because of thick sediments. In order to estimate sediment thickness, we first determine a simple linear relationship from a scatter plot of the airborne gravity points and the interpolated Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) topography along the Rampant Lion I tracks, and computed corresponding quasi-topography tracks by multiplying the linear relationship with the airborne free-air anomalies. We then take the differences between the SRTM and quasi-topography as a first-order estimate of sediment thickness. A global gravity model (GOCO02S), upward continued to the same altitude (7 km above mean sea level) as the data collection, was compared with the low-pass filtered (with cutoff wavelength 132 km which is approximately equivalent to the reported safe degree and order 250 of GOCO02S at 34° N) combined airborne free-air anomalies. The rms difference between the two data sets was 12.4 mGal. The observed admittance in the western Afghanistan mountains appears to be best fit to a theoretical elastic plate compensation model (with an effective elastic thickness of 5 km and crustal thickness of 22 km) where the ratio between surface load and subsurface load is equal. © The Authors 2012. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Royal Astronomical Society.