Depth to the bottom of magnetic sources (DBMS) from aeromagnetic data of Central India using modified centroid method for fractal distribution of sources

• The DBMS in the central Indian region varies from 22 to 43 km.
• The large variations in the DBMS values indicate complex nature of Indian crust.
• The surface heat flow values cannot be linearly interpolated to deeper depth.

The depth to the bottom of the magnetic sources (DBMS) has been estimated from the aeromagnetic data of Central India. The conventional centroid method of DBMS estimation assumes random uniform uncorrelated distribution of sources and to overcome this limitation a modified centroid method based on scaling distribution has been proposed. Shallower values of the DBMS are found for the south western region. The DBMS values are found as low as 22 km in the south west Deccan trap covered regions and as deep as 43 km in the Chhattisgarh Basin. In most of the places DBMS are much shallower than the Moho depth, earlier found from the seismic study and may be representing the thermal/compositional/petrological boundaries. The large variation in the DBMS indicates the complex nature of the Indian crust.