Oasis Montaj Best Practice Guide: VOXI Earth Modelling - Preparing Data For Inversion
Oasis Montaj Best Practice Guide: VOXI Earth Modelling - Preparing Data For Inversion
Practice Guide
VOXI Earth Modelling - Preparing Data for Inversion
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Manual release date: April-17-12.
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Preparing Data for Inversion
Introduction
In order to predict the property of a sub-surface structure, a good place to start is with a map of the
observed data.
A close inspection of the data will help identify an Area of Interest (AOI) for further investigation.
To properly handle the vertical positioning of the sub-surface structure, the vertical relief of the AOI
should also be supplied.
The vertical relief is commonly referred to as Digital Elevation Model (DEM).
DEMs can be downloaded from a variety of free sources, such as SRTM, USGS, GSC, etc. The Oasis
montaj tool, Seeker, downloads SRTM data that matches the coverage of an existing Geosoft data file.
Geophysical inversions are applied towards the latter part of an interpretation project. By that stage, all
effects due to sources other than the actual geology should have been eliminated as much as possible.
For VOXI, the profile data must be lag corrected and the temporal and instrument effects filtered.
In the case of gravity data, the data reductions must be applied, while in the case of magnetic data,
the IGRF/DGRF must be removed.
The inversion process resolves the variation of the sub-surface, thus it is the residual field that should be
subjected to inversion.
Tie-line levelling alters the amplitude of the data without accordingly adjusting the elevation. As a
result, although the gridded data will look better, the integrity of the observed data is altered. If
you intend to use tie-line levelled data, you are cautioned to do so with due consideration.
Data Preparation
Observed Data
Import the observed data into a Geosoft database (GDB).
If the temporal (lag/IGRF), instrument (drift, noise, aircraft systematic noise), and positioning offset
(relative location of GPS and sensor) data corrections have not been applied, proceed to do so.
Data corrections intend to eliminate effects due to all sources other than geology.
Preparing Data for Inversion
Observed Data
By producing the polygon from a map that has acquired the projection of the data, you make sure
that the polygon has an associated projection. This point, although not required, is preferred.
You also have the option to create the polygon in the VOXI interface, however it may be more
convenient to generate the AOI polygon while preparing the data.
Figure 3: Using a map of the area, draw and save the AOI in the Geosoft polygon format.
If the DEM projection is different from that of the observed database, it will be re-projected within
VOXI.
Figure 4: SRTM grid of the AOI downloaded using the Geosoft Seeker tool.
Your input data for VOXI is now ready to perform an inversion.