Publication Name: Australasian Exploration Geoscience Conference 2019
Authors: Wenping Jiang*, Ross Brodie, Jingming Duan
Date Published: September 2019
Number of Pages: 5
Abstract:
Cover thickness estimation is critical to mineral exploration effectiveness in covered terrains. Geophysical methods are able to detect physical properties contrasts in different earth materials without seeing them. We present the application of the audio-magnetotelluric (AMT) technique to cover thickness estimation using deterministic and stochastic inversion approaches. The deterministic Occam’s inversion method solves the regularised problem by searching for the smoothest model that fits the data within certain tolerances. The stochastic algorithm uses trans-dimensional Markov chain Monte Carlo techniques to generate an ensemble of millions of conductivity-depth models that adequately fit the data given the assigned noise levels. Statistics are derived from the posterior probability distribution of the conductivity at depth. This approach gives more pronounced layer boundaries that allows more straightforward interpretation of resistivity structure.