New developments of the magnetic tilt‐depth method to improve structural mapping of sedimentary basins

ABSTRACT This paper interprets aeromagnetic data for a deep basin section of the Karroo rift in south‐east Tanzania. We use a novel integrated approach involving the application of advanced derivatives to define structure and the tilt‐depth method to determine and map the depth to basement. In the latter case we use the result of both reduced to pole and reduced to equator data to help constrain the shape and depth of the basin. We show that for a reduced to pole aeromagnetic data set, the generalized form of the local phase, called the tilt derivative, is an effective means of providing an initial (first pass) mapping of a sedimentary basin in terms of its fault structure, dip direction of faults and depth to basement. Since the amplitude of the tilt derivative does not contain information on the strength of the geomagnetic field nor magnetization (other than inclination) of the causative body, the susceptibility contrast across faults/contacts is derived from the analytic signal derivative. We also investigate how effective the tilt derivative and tilt‐depth method are for structural and depth to basement mapping in regions close to the magnetic equator, where the reduction to pole transform is often unstable; this is done using the same Tanzania data set transformed to the pole and the equator. We find that the tilt derivative applied to the reduction to equator data cannot be used to map the structure because of the effects of magnetic anisotropy, which results in the magnetic response of structures varying with strike azimuth. To overcome this anisotropy problem the analytic signal and/or local wavenumber derivatives, which are for all practical purposes independent of inclination, provide the best means of defining the major structural trends. We also find that the tilt‐depth method provides coherent depth to basement estimates for both reduced to pole and reduced to equator data. For the deep basin sections of the Karroo rift, there is a sparsity of tilt‐depth results from both the reduced to pole and reduced to equator data sets. However, each set of results has a different spatial coverage, so when combined they provide a better spatial sampling of the long wavelength magnetic character of the basin and thus improve the constraints on the minimum curvature gridding method to map the shape and depth of the basin.