Interpretation of gravity data using 2-D continuous wavelet transformation and 3-D inverse modeling

•Application of 2D continuous wavelet transform on gravity grid data•Introducing the new 2D mother wavelet•Comparing the 2DCWT results with 3D constrained/unconstrained density band inversion•Performance evaluation of two methods against the noise

Recently the continuous wavelet transform has been proposed for interpretation of potential field anomalies. In this paper, we introduced a 2D wavelet based method that uses a new mother wavelet for determination of the location and the depth to the top and base of gravity anomaly. The new wavelet is the first horizontal derivatives of gravity anomaly of a buried cube with unit dimensions. The effectiveness of the proposed method is compared with Li and Oldenburg inversion algorithm and is demonstrated with synthetics and real gravity data. The real gravity data is taken over the Mobrun massive sulfide ore body in Noranda, Quebec, Canada. The obtained results of the 2D wavelet based algorithm and Li and Oldenburg inversion on the Mobrun ore body had desired similarities to the drill-hole depth information. In all of the inversion algorithms the model non-uniqueness is the challenging problem. Proposed method is based on a simple theory and there is no model non-uniqueness on it.