Using Euler Deconvolution as Part of a Mineral Exploration Project

Abstract

Mineral exploration projects can make considerable use of a variety of geophysical techniques and datasets, including magnetic and gravity data. The interpretation of large quantities of data can be very time consuming, so semi-automatic interpretation techniques are often used to provide initial estimates of the parameters (primarily the location and depth) of the sources of anomalies. Euler deconvolution is a commonly used interpretation method for potential fields which has a number of advantages over many other techniques, such as working in the presence of remanent magnetisation, and not being restricted to a particular model such as a contact. A second-order version of Euler’s equation is introduced here, which is much less affected by trends in the data than the standard method and additionally produces depth parabolas, which simplify the interpretation of results. The method was applied to aeromagnetic data from a mineral exploration project in Southern Africa and provided plausible results.