Determination of crustal interface topography from potential fields

• DOI: 10.1190/1.1442180
• Publication Date: 2002-10-11T20:01:07Z
• Authors: Mark Pilkington; D. J. Crossley
• Keywords: 01 natural sciences; 0105 earth and related environmental sciences

We present a method for determination of the topography of an interface separating two uniformly but differently magnetized media. The technique is developed within the framework of discrete linear inverse theory and exploits the quasi‐linearity of the problem to derive a simple, efficient algorithm suitable for use on large gridded data sets. Variation of auxiliary parameters allows a suite of acceptable models to be produced rapidly; these parameters can be appraised in light of available geologic and geophysical evidence. Because very large matrices are involved when large amounts of data are interpreted, approximate resolution measures requiring no matrix inversion provide useful information concerning averages of the constructed topography.