A pragmatic approach to the magnetic inversion for basement estimation

We present a pragmatic approach to the depth to basement estimation from magnetic data.

The proposed implementation leverages a parsimonious model representation with rectangular prisms, a computationally efficient forward modelling and inversion scheme, and an automated optimization of the key modelling parameters.

This practical methodology enables a rapid assessment of the magnetic basement’s main highs and lows, and it is perfectly applicable even with very little prior information.

In this work, the pragmatic magnetic basement inversion method is applied to a realistic dataset, representative of a challenging onshore fold and thrust belt scenario in a mountainous setting.

The obtained results demonstrate the effectiveness of the tool in estimating the basement trend in few inversion iterations, and the runtime performance confirms its applicability to wide-ranging regional studies.