Large-Scale 3D Modeling and Inversion of Multiphysics Airborne Geophysical Data: A Case Study from the Arabian Shield, Saudi Arabia

Zhdanov, Michael S.; Alfouzan, Fouzan; Cox, Leif H.; Alotaibi, Abdulrahman; Alyousif, Mazen M.; Sunwall, David; Endo, Mitsuru

doi:10.3390/min8070271

Cited by 16 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 27 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…The original regional study [1] area was covered by airborne EM, magnetics, and gravity surveys. From the airborne data, several large-scale regional features were discovered [1].…”

Section: Geophysical Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The original regional study [1] area was covered by airborne EM, magnetics, and gravity surveys. From the airborne data, several large-scale regional features were discovered [1]. Many small-scale anomalies (hundreds of meters areal extent) were also seen based on the Glass Earth models of the physical properties of the subsurface.…”

Section: Geophysical Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The goal is to explore for resources in the relatively unexplored regions of Saudi Arabia for minerals, groundwater, and geothermal resources as well as strictly academic investigations. The initial stage of the project involved the acquisition, processing, and interpretation of airborne electromagnetic, gravity, and magnetic geophysical data over an 8000 square kilometer area [1]. The project helped to identify a dozen potential mining targets, which can be associated with gold and other base metal deposits, including zinc and copper.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Spectral Induced Polarization Survey with Distributed Array System for Mineral Exploration: Case Study in Saudi Arabia

et al. 2020

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The Saudi Arabian Glass Earth Pilot Project is a geophysical exploration program to explore the upper crust of the Kingdom for minerals, groundwater, and geothermal resources as well as strictly academic investigations. The project began with over 8000 km2 of green-field area. Airborne geophysics including electromagnetic (EM), magnetics, and gravity were used to develop several high priority targets for ground follow-up. Based on the results of airborne survey, a spectral induced polarization (SIP) survey was completed over one of the prospective targets. The field data were collected with a distributed array system, which has the potential for strong inductive coupling. This was examined in a synthetic study, and it was determined that with the geometries and conductivities in the field survey, the inductive coupling effect may be visible in the data. In this study, we also confirmed that time domain is vastly superior to frequency domain for avoiding inductive coupling, that measuring decays from 50 ms to 2 s allow discrimination of time constants from 1 ms to 5 s, and the relaxation parameter C is strongly coupled to intrinsic chargeability. We developed a method to fully include all 3D EM effects in the inversion of induced polarization (IP) data. The field SIP data were inverted using the generalized effective-medium theory of induced polarization (GEMTIP) in conjunction with an integral equation-based modeling and inversion methods. These methods can replicate all inductive coupling and EM effects, which removes one significant barrier to inversion of large bandwidth spectral IP data. The results of this inversion were interpreted and compared with results of drill hole set up in the survey area. The drill hole intersected significant mineralization which is currently being further investigated. The project can be considered a technical success, validating the methods and effective-medium inversion technique used for the project.

show abstract

“…The original regional study [1] area was covered by airborne EM, magnetics, and gravity surveys. From the airborne data, several large-scale regional features were discovered [1].…”

Section: Geophysical Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Geophysical Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Spectral Induced Polarization Survey with Distributed Array System for Mineral Exploration: Case Study in Saudi Arabia

et al. 2020

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Airborne time-domain electromagnetic (ATEM) data have been collected for decades for mineral prospection [1][2][3][4]. Probably, the Stanmac-McPhar ATEM system-tested during the summer of 1948 in Canada-can be considered the first application of this methodology [5].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

(Quasi-)Real-Time Inversion of Airborne Time-Domain Electromagnetic Data via Artificial Neural Network

et al. 2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The possibility to have results very quickly after, or even during, the collection of electromagnetic data would be important, not only for quality check purposes, but also for adjusting the location of the proposed flight lines during an airborne time-domain acquisition. This kind of readiness could have a large impact in terms of optimization of the Value of Information of the measurements to be acquired. In addition, the importance of having fast tools for retrieving resistivity models from airborne time-domain data is demonstrated by the fact that Conductivity-Depth Imaging methodologies are still the standard in mineral exploration. In fact, they are extremely computationally efficient, and, at the same time, they preserve a very high lateral resolution. For these reasons, they are often preferred to inversion strategies even if the latter approaches are generally more accurate in terms of proper reconstruction of the depth of the targets and of reliable retrieval of true resistivity values of the subsurface. In this research, we discuss a novel approach, based on neural network techniques, capable of retrieving resistivity models with a quality comparable with the inversion strategy, but in a fraction of the time. We demonstrate the advantages of the proposed novel approach on synthetic and field datasets.

show abstract

“…It has been successfully applied in mineral resource exploration, oil and gas exploration, and identification of geological structural units, etc. [8][9][10]. The linear physical property inversion method is now relatively mature after decades of development.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Three-Dimensional Magnetic Inversion Based on an Adaptive Quadtree Data Compression

et al. 2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Three-dimensional magnetic inversion allows the distribution of magnetic parameters to be obtained, and it is an important tool for geological exploration and interpretation. However, because of the redundancy of the data obtained from large-scale investigations or high-density sampling, it is very computationally intensive to use these data for iterative inversion calculations. In this paper, we propose a method for compressing magnetic data by using an adaptive quadtree decomposition method, which divides the two-dimensional data region into four quadrants and progressively subdivides them by recursion until the data in each quadrant meets the regional consistency criterion. The method allows for dense sampling at the abnormal boundaries with large amplitude changes and sparse sampling at regions with small amplitude changes, and achieves the best approximation to the original data with the least amount of data, thus retaining more anomalous information while achieving the purpose of data compression. In addition, assigning values to the data in the quadrants using the averaging method is essentially equivalent to average filtering, which reduces the noise of the magnetic data. Testing the synthetic model and applying the method to mineral exploration a prove that it can effectively compress the magnetic data and greatly improve the computational efficiency.

show abstract

Large-Scale 3D Modeling and Inversion of Multiphysics Airborne Geophysical Data: A Case Study from the Arabian Shield, Saudi Arabia

Cited by 16 publications

References 27 publications

Spectral Induced Polarization Survey with Distributed Array System for Mineral Exploration: Case Study in Saudi Arabia

Spectral Induced Polarization Survey with Distributed Array System for Mineral Exploration: Case Study in Saudi Arabia

(Quasi-)Real-Time Inversion of Airborne Time-Domain Electromagnetic Data via Artificial Neural Network

Three-Dimensional Magnetic Inversion Based on an Adaptive Quadtree Data Compression

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About