Interdisciplinary 3D potential field modelling of complex lithospheric structures by IGMAS+

Götze, Hans-Jürgen ORCIDiD
Bott, Judith ORCIDiD
Gómez Dacal, Maria Laura ORCIDiD
Gomez Garcia, Angela Maria ORCIDiD
Rodriguez Piceda, Constanza ORCIDiD
Meeßen, Christian ORCIDiD
Plonka, Christian
Spooner, Cameron ORCIDiD
Scheck-Wenderoth, Magdalena ORCIDiD
Schmidt, Sabine ORCIDiD
Anikiev, Denis ORCIDiD

DOI: https://doi.org/10.23689/fidgeo-3938
Götze, Hans-Jürgen; Bott, Judith; Gómez Dacal, Maria Laura; Gomez Garcia, Angela Maria; Rodriguez Piceda, Constanza; Meeßen, Christian; Plonka, Christian; Spooner, Cameron; Scheck-Wenderoth, Magdalena; Schmidt, Sabine; Anikiev, Denis, 2021: Interdisciplinary 3D potential field modelling of complex lithospheric structures by IGMAS+. DOI: https://doi.org/10.23689/fidgeo-3938. 

Abstract

We introduce an approach for 3D joint interpretation of potential fields and its derivatives under the condition of constraining data and information. The interactive 3D gravity and magnetic application IGMAS (Interactive Gravity and Magnetic Application System) has been around for more than 30 years, initially developed on a mainframe and then transferred to the first DOS PCs, before it was adapted to Linux in the ’90s and finally implemented as a cross-platform Java application with GUI. Since 2019 IGMAS+ is maintained and developed in the Helmholtz Centre Potsdam – GFZ German Research Centre by the staff of Section 4.5 – Basin Modelling and ID2 – eScience Centre. The core of IGMAS+ applies an analytical solution of the volume integral for the gravity and magnetic effect of a homogeneous body. It is based on the reduction of the three-folded integral to an integral over the bounding polyhedrons that are formed by triangles. Later the algorithm has been extended to cover all elements of the gravity tensor as well and the optimized storage enables fast leastsquares inversion of densities and changes to the model geometry and this flexibility makes geometry changes easy. Because of the triangular model structure of model interfaces, IGMAS can handle complex structures (multi- Z surfaces) like the overhangs of salt domes and variable densities due to voxelization. To account for the curvature of the Earth, we use spherical geometries. Therefore IGMAS+ is capable to handle models from big-scale to regional and small-scale models (meters) used in Applied Geophysics.