Lithological Characterization and Its Application Based on Three-Dimensional Structure-Coupled Joint Inversion of Gravity and Magnetic Data

Abstract

Incorporating structural-coupling constraint, known as the cross-gradients criterion, helps to improve the focussing trend in cross-plot of multiple physical properties. Based on this feature, a post-processing technique is studied to characterize the lithological types of subsurface geological materials after joint inversion. A simple domain transform, which converts two kinds of participant physical properties into an artificial complex array, is adopted to extract anomalies manually from homogenous host rock. A synthetic example shows that structure-coupled joint inverted results tend to concentrate on the feature trends in the cross-plot, and the main geological targets are recovered well by a radius-azimuth plot. In a field data example, the lithological characterization reveals that the main rock types interpreted in the study area agree with the geological information, thus demonstrating the feasibility of this technique.