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Comparison of Some Commonly Used Regional Residual Separation Techniques
Comparison of Some Commonly Used Regional Residual Separation Techniques
Comparison of Some Commonly Used Regional Residual Separation Techniques
Pierre Keating*, Nicolas Pinet and Mark Pilkington, Geological Survey of Canada
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The oldest technique is graphical separation. In this case, Upward continuation as a separation filter is first tested by
the interpreter uses a series of profiles along which the using a continuation height of 14 km which should remove
separation is manually performed. This process allows the gravity effect of bodies that have depth extent less than
taking into account surface data and other information such 7 km, the maximum depth extent of the Sept-Iles layered
as the known or estimated depth of some sources. Typical intrusive and the Shickshock Group. The resulting regional
examples of the use of graphical separation are given by nevertheless contains anomalies that are directly associated
Gupta and Ramani (1980) in a Precambrian terrain, and to these two bodies. A series of increasing continuation
heights are tested and the effect of the Sept-Iles and Shick- southeast. Moreover, amplitudes of both the graphical and
shocs anomalies is finally removed at a continuation height non-linear filtered regional anomaly maps are approximate-
of 80 km which, in theory, should remove the gravity effect ly the same.
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range is smaller than in Figure 4. To test non-linear filter- A better evaluation of these results is obtained by compar-
ing we use a 4.5 km long non-linear filter since the appar- ing profiles (Figure 6) of the measured residual total mag-
ent width of the magnetic anomalies caused by the Mont netic field and calculated regional fields. The regional
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Alexandre syncline volcanics is about 4 km at the most. fields obtained from non-linear and low-pass filtering are
The calculated regional (not shown here) still shows some nearly identical except a relatively minor (~20 nT) discre-
response from the hinge zone of the syncline. All short pancy over the narrow high-amplitude magnetic anomaly
wavelength responses in the north-western part of the map due to the Mont Alexandre volcanics. There the regional
have been removed and only the high-amplitude long wa- field calculated from the non-linear filter is slightly less
velength component due to the Lemieux intrusive suite affected by this sharp anomaly than the regional obtained
intrusive is present. from low-pass filtering. Over the Lemieux intrusive the
regional fields estimated by non-linear and low-pass filter-
ing are similar but we cannot determine if they are correct
since too little is known on the structure of this intrusive at
depth. This is a good example for the importance of geo-
logical constraints when determining a regional field.
Figure 4: Regional field from 24 km low-pass filtering The regional estimated from the upward continued magnet-
ic field at a height of 12 km does not correspond with the
regional that would be drawn by an experienced interpreter.
In particular, its amplitude is too high over most of the
profile, and too low over its northern part. Also, over the
south portion of the Lemieux intrusive, we believe that
none of the tested techniques provide an adequate regional
background. At this geomagnetic latitude we expect the
regional field to be at about the same level as the base of
the three small amplitude magnetic anomalies located there,
however it is much higher. Over this section, the lengths of
the low pass and non-linear filters used to estimate the re-
gional are two long. On the other hand, selecting shorter
filter lengths would result in poor results over the Mont
Alexandre volcanics.
Conclusions
apparent width of the anomalies to be removed. For gravity Keating, P. and Pinet, N, 2011, Use of non-linear filtering
data, the use of upward continuation as a separation filter for the regional-residual separation of potential field data:
was not as successful as expected. By trial and error we Journal of Applied Geophysics, 73, 315-322.
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We note that for both for gravity and magnetic data that at
least two different techniques give similar results. We con-
clude that in practice one should always use two different
techniques to determine the regional field since a good
agreement between their results can be an indication of an
acceptable regional field. It is also likely that different re-
sults would be obtained in other geological contexts.
References