Total variation regularization for the reconstruction of a mountain topography

The aim of this paper is to reconstruct a paleo mountain topography using a total variation (TV) regularization. A coupled system integrates the tectonic process with the surface process to simulate the evolution of a paleo mountain topography. The tectonic process and the surface process are described by a 3D convection–diffusion equation and a 2D convection–diffusion equation, respectively. We recover a piecewise smooth velocity field for the tectonic process as well as reconstruct a piecewise smooth mountain topography for the surface process using a TV regularization in an iterative fashion. The effects of the number of samples and of wavelengths on inversions are investigated. In our numerical experiments, we shall experience three difficulties: (I) recovering a large quantity of information from the limited amount of measurement data; (II) detecting sharp features; (III) choosing a properly initial guess value for a TV regularization. The numerical experiments show that a TV regularization is an efficient and stable algorithm.