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Geophysical Prospecting: Gravity inversion of 2D bedrock topography for heterogeneous sedimentary basins based on line integral and maximum difference reduction methods

Based on the line integral (LI) and maximum difference reduction (MDR) methods, an automated iterative forward modelling scheme (LI‐MDR algorithm) is developed for the inversion of 2D bedrock topography from a gravity anomaly profile for heterogeneous sedimentary basins. The unknown basin topography can be smooth as for intracratonic basins or discontinuous as for rift and strike‐slip basins. In case studies using synthetic data, the new algorithm can invert the sedimentary basins bedrock depth within a mean accuracy better than 5% when the gravity anomaly data have an accuracy of better than 0.5 mGal. The main characteristics of the inversion algorithm include: (1) the density contrast of sedimentary basins can be constant or vary horizontally and/or vertically in a very broad but a priori known manner; (2) three inputs are required: the measured gravity anomaly, accuracy level and the density contrast function, (3) the simplification that each gravity station has only one bedrock depth leads to an approach to perform rapid inversions using the forward modelling calculated by LI. The inversion process stops when the residual anomalies (the observed minus the calculated) falls within an ‘error envelope’ whose amplitude is the input accuracy level. The inversion algorithm offers in many cases the possibility of performing an agile 2D gravity inversion on basins with heterogeneous sediments. Both smooth and discontinuous bedrock topography with steep spatial gradients can be well recovered. Limitations include: (1) for each station position, there is only one corresponding point vertically down at the basement; and (2) the largest error in inverting bedrock topography occurs at the deepest points.

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