ON THE USE OF THE AUTOCORRELATION METHOD FOR ESTIMATING THE DEPTH TO THE MAGNETIC BASEMENT

The depth to the top of magnetic dykes can be estimated from total field aeromagnetic data using the relation between the depth to magnetic sources and the autocorrelation function of magnetic data. By using synthetic anomalies we show that in the ideal case, depth can be determined to an accuracy of 10% or better, when the anomaly sources are two-dimensional dykes. However, the estimated depths depend on the width of the dykes. The estimated depth is about 0.6 times the actual depth to the top of thin dykes, and around the true depth for thick dykes having width-to-depth ratio around 3. The depth is considerably overestimated for very thick dykes (e.g., contacts, which is a special case of the thick dyke). Thus, the autocorrelation method requires that the width-to-depth ratio of the dyke is estimated independently to correctly estimate the depths. Alternatively, it must be assumed that the width-to-depth ratio for the two-dimensional source body is between 1.5 and 4.