2D Gravity Inversion Technique in The

Study of Cheshire Basin

Nadiah Hanim Shafie
Postgraduate Student, School of Environmental Science and Natural Resources,
Faculty of Science and Technology, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600
Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia
nadhanim.shafie@gmail.com

Umar Hamzah
Professor, School of Environmental Science and Natural Resources, Faculty of
Science and Technology, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600 Bangi,
Selangor, Malaysia
umar@ukm.edu.my

Abdul Rahim Samsudin

Professor, School of Environmental Science and Natural Resources, Faculty of
Science and Technology, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600 Bangi,
Selangor, Malaysia
abrahim@ukm.my

ABSTRACT
The gravity method involves measuring the Earths gravitational field at specific locations
influenced by differences in density of sub-surface rocks. It has found numerous applications in
engineering, environmental and geothermal studies especially in locating voids, faults, buried
stream valleys, water tables and geothermal heat sources. A total of 753 gravity data acquired
from the northwestern part of the United Kingdom by the British Geological Society were used in
this study with the aims of studying the major structural patterns within the Cheshire basin. The
data were processed and analysed with the aid of Oasis Montaj software to determine the fault
trends within the entire sedimentary basin. The Bouguer gravity map shows positive anomaly in
the northwestern part of the study area indicating the presence of high density sedimentary rocks
while negative anomaly observed in the southern part corresponds to low density sediments. The
regional and residual isostatic maps derived from different cut-off wavelengths reflect changes in
anomalies corresponding to different types of sedimentary rocks such as mudstone, sandstone
and limestone. The major faults patterns in Cheshire basin were clearly observed from the
Bouguer gravity total horizontal derivative map. Most of the major faults observed in the south of
study area are trending in NW-SE and NE-SW directions. The N-S trend minor faults are found
in the west and east, while the E-W trends were dominant in the north and south of the study
area. The limestone basement depth of about 3736m was estimated from the 2D-modeled cross
section developed along the E-W border.

KEYWORDS: Gravity anomaly, 2D modeling, Cheshire basin, Oasis Montaj software

INTRODUCTION
Gravity method is a non-destructive geophysical technique that has been widely used to
measure the earths gravitational field at specific locations on the earths surface due to the
difference in subsurface density values. This method works when the buried targets have densities
very much different as compared to the host material. The gravity technique has successfully
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delineated the Nash dome in coastal Texas which was considered the first geophysical oil and gas
discovery (LaFehr, 1980; Nabighian et al. 2005). Its application was also considered as fruitful in
both mineral (Hoover et al. 1991; Dransfield 2007) and oil exploration (Badmus et al. 2011) in
terms of its ability in determining the thickness of overburden material overlying the bedrock or
the volume of any sedimentary deposit. This method is also popularly used in exploring the
geological faults (Gao & Song 2006), buried ancient stream valleys (Lyatsky & Dietrich 1998),
cavities (Hajian et al. 2012), geothermal deposits (Mariita 2010) and changing of subsidence
levels in sinkholes development (Rybakov et al. 2001).
The purpose of this study is to produce improved gravity anomaly map by using the Oasis
Montaj software which enable applications of isostatic regional and residual filtering as well as
the total horizontal derivative filtering applied to the gravity data. The resulting anomaly maps
were then used in the interpretations of faults trend and tectonic system of the subsurface
geological formations in the study area. The 2D inversed model was generated to estimate the
depth and thickness of the subsurface geology overlying the bedrock. The study area covered 50
km x 20 km and located in the northern part of Cheshire Basin, North West of United Kingdom.
A total of 753 gravity data measured along 1.6 x 1.6 km each were obtained from the British
Geological Society (BGS) for used in this study.

Figure 1: Location of the study area as shown in the black box.

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Geologically, Cheshire Basin (Figure 1), Carlisle Basin and Irish Sea Basin are located in
North-Western England. McLean (1978) observed that the Cheshire Basin and East Irish Sea
Basin formed part of NW-SE trending Clyde Belt of Triassic troughs extending from the
Highland Boundary Fault to the Cheshire Basin. Figure 2 shows the geological map of the study
area indicating the Cheshire Basin which generally lies within a NNW-SSE trending PermoTriassic rift that extends from the Wassex Basin to the Scottish Inner Hebrides. This half-graben
is bordered on the east by the Wem-Red Rock fault system, which has depth to Permo-Triassic
base at 3500 m (Chadwick and Evans, 1995). Colter and Barr (1975) found that the Triassic
succession thins out by depositional onlap at the western margin. In the early 1970s, several oil
companies conducted seismic surveys across this area and discovered that the seismic sections
had problems in defining the base of Permo-Triassic sediment. Therefore, Lamb et al. (1983)
stated that the assumption of no flat-lying Coal Measures in the Permo-Trias layer was uncertain.

Figure 2: Geological map of the study area.

THEORY
Solution of inverse problem in finding acceptable geological models representing measured
gravity field variations is a complex task. Figure 3 shows one or several 3D layers model which
are defined in a bounded space. The inversion procedure requires no explicit matrix inversion
leads to a simple factorization of the forward problem in the frequency domain. The earlier 3D
methods divided the subsurface into a several vertical infinite depth prisms which can be
determined by least squares inversion in the space domain (Cordell and Henderson 1968; Gerard

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and Debeglia 1975; Chai and Hinze 1988). This method lies in speed and good convergence even
though it is limited to small data sets. The theoretical basis follows closely to several studies by
Parker (1973) for forward problem and Pilkington and Crossley (1986) for inverse problem.

Figure 3: Geometry of the forward problem.

The constant density contrast of the gravitational potential bounded below the horizontal
plane, z = 0 and above the surface, z = h(r) is as shown in Fig 3. The ro position is given by
(1)
where G is Newton's gravitational constant, is the density contrast and z is positive upwards.
Parker's method manipulates Fourier transformation of (1) by lessen computational demanding
form of
(2)
where (k) is the gravity anomaly in frequency domain, F[ ] indicates the Fourier transformation,
zo is height of the observation plane and k is the wavefactor. The Fourier transform can be
frequently evaluated and easy to used for large gridded data sets makes the equation (2) effective.
Parker (1973) also stated that the z = 0 level must be placed at the average h(r) value in (2) for the
optimum convergence series.
When the density contrast of the sediment in the sedimentary basin is constant, the non-linear
inversion for depth to source in the model are varying. The linearized method of the forward
problem is used to solve non-linear problems. The linearized form in (2) can be simplified by
keeping the first term
(3)
Using (3), the gravity values in vector unit will then become
(4)

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where T is a diagonal matrix with elements,

(5)
E* and E are inverse Fourier and matrix equivalents of Fourier transform respectively and h is
the first-order topography. Equation (4) is similar to the singular value decomposition of the
forward problem, where T contains the eigenvalues ti while E and E* correspond to eigenvector
matrices.
The topographic inversion problem can be solved by using an iterative scheme based on
equation (4) and the non-linear problem as follows;
(6)
where gobs is the observed gravity data and gn is the calculated effects of hn model where
topography ho= 0, to ensure the result of the inversion will have minimal affect by initial estimate.
This equation uses a constant inverse (E*T-1E) during the iterative procedure to differentiate from
the standard inverse method. Small eigenvalues coresponding to large wavenumbers lead to
instability in the resulting problem. Magnitude of the eigenvalues of matrix T affect on the
stability of the inverse in (6). There are many ways to eliminate instability in this problem. The
latter approach is taken and considered as more approriate when no clear distinction can be made
between the small and large eigenvalues.

MATERIALS AND METHOD

Gravity method was carried out in investigating the subsurface geology or the information
about the earths subsurface. In this technique, a qualitative examination of the gravity grid
values, contour maps and the gravity profiles were developed to determine the lateral location of
gravity variations in order to quantify the subsurface feature causing the gravity variations. Data
gridding was performed in the editing stage and further stages in the data processing techniques
can be performed semi-quantitatively to detect tectonic structural and fault such as shaded relief
of the anomaly map, vertical derivatives anomaly map and the amplitude of the analytic signal
(Klingele et al., 1991; Marson and Klingele, 1993; Lyatsky et al., 2004). The presence of faults
can be inferred from positive and negative lineaments in the gravity anomaly maps and the
dominant trends are estimated by rose diagram plots.

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Figure 4: Positions of gravity stations.

The Bouguer gravity anomalies are calculated with reference to the Geodetic Reference
System 1967 (GRS67), International Gravity Standardisation Net 1971 (ISGN71) and National
Gravity Reference Net 1973 (NGRN73). The gravity reduction were carried out by the BGS. Fig.
4 shows the location of the gravity stations in this study. All the gravity data have been tied up to
the Ordnance Survey Great Britain 1936 (OSGB36) datum and grid by British National Grid.
Oasis Montaj software is used for processing including the projection, gridding, countering,
filtering and plotting. The data were shown in latitude, longitude and length of gravity stations.
The grid interval chosen was 1.4km x1.4km grid spacing using minimum curvature. Bouguer
anomaly (BA) gravity map were calculated by using an equation (7) as shown below;
BA g 0 gt (

g
2Gc)h
z

(7)

where g0 is the observed gravity value, gt is theoretical gravity value, g z is vertical gradient
gravity value (0.3086 mgal/m), G is gravity constant (6.67210-6 m2kg-1mgal), c is rock density
and h is station elevation above the datum. The density value used in this study is 2675 kg/m3 and
g is given in the equation (8) as written below;
g = 978.03185(1 + 0.005278895 sin2 + 0.000023462 sin4 )

(8)

where g is gravity value in Gals and is the latitude.

Low-pass and high-pass wavelength filters were applied to the gravity data to produce
isostatic regional and residual map. The high-pass filtering is used to separate the regional and
local anomalies. Low-pass filtering is applied to cut the desired wavelength where the wavelength
lower than the required one will be cut off. This low-pass filter is performed by Fast Fourier
Transform (FFT) technique in the frequency domain.

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Total horizontal derivative (THD) function is used to enhance the linear features in the
gravity contour which reveal the presence of faults, dykes, and lineaments in the study area. This
operation measures basically the rate of change of gravity field in X and Y directions and creates
a resultant grid (Cordell, 1979). This has the effect of highlighting high gradient areas such as
might occur at faulted boundaries which is useful for delineating structural trends and the azimuth
specific horizontal derivative can also be calculated to further highlight any particular trends
(Cordell and Grauch, 1985).
Gravity modelling will be carried out in the final stage of gravity interpretation with the aims
of determining the density, depth and geometry of one or more subsurface bodies. The GM-SYS
modelling is an interactive software for 2D-modeling of geological cross sections perpendicularly
constructed to the strike of the body or structure. It also has the ability to calculate and display
gravity responses of any subsurface body. The method used to calculate the gravity responses of
any structure or subsurface body are based on the formulations given by Talwani et al. (1959),
Chakravarthi and Sundararajan (2005), and make use of algorithms described in Won and Bevis
(1978). The calculated gravity responses will be compared with the observed gravity anomaly and
the model dimensions will be adjusted so that the calculated gravity response of the model and the
observed anomaly are matched. The final model will be considered to represent the actual
subsurface body for the observed anomaly.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The Bouguer anomaly gravity map (Figure 5) shows gravity values ranging from -4.2 to 18.2
mGal. Basically, the gravity values are decreasing towards the southeastern part of the study area
and increasing towards the north and west. In general, the highs and lows are associated with rock
densities as well as the thickness of rock formation overlying the basement. The low density zone
may be corresponding to a much thicker subsurface sedimentary overlying the limestone
basement. The high gravity trend is most likely interpreted as thinning of sedimentary formation
towards the east and ended with higher density material in the east and southwestern part of the
study area. The minimum or lowest density zone observed in the central part of the study area can
be associated with the thickest sedimentary bedding or basin depocenter.

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Figure 5: Bouguer anomaly map and the locations of profile 1 and 2.

Figure 6 shows the 30km wavelength cut-off map of regional gravity or isostatic regional
map of the study area indicating the shape of basement rock underlying the sedimentary deposits.
The gravity values increase to the northwest and decreased towards the southwest. This indicates
the higher basement rock position in the northeast and deeper towards the southeast.

Figure 6: Isostatic regional map.

Figure 7 shows the isostatic residual map obtained by subtracting the Bouguer from regional
gravity values. This kind of map is meant for estimating the presence of structures in the

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sedimentary basin above the basement in the study area. A band of high gravity values trending
from northwest to southeast is observed in the isostatic residual map. This high gravity zone is
sandwiched between lower gravity values in the north and south. This trend can be interpreted as
representing a possible anticlinal fold (F) with the crest located in the middle part of the study
area. The fold dips towards the north and south which is covered by thicker sediment.

Figure 7: Isostatic residual map. F denotes the position of a fold

The total horizontal derivative map obtained from bouguer gravity map is shown in Figure
8 The general trends of faults in the Cheshire basin are shown in this map. Most of the major
faults found in the southern part of the study area are trending in NW-SE and NE-SW directions
as shown in the rose diagram (Figure 9). The minor faults are found in the western and eastern
parts of the study area with N-S trending faults while in the northern and southern part the faults
are trending E-W.

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Figure 8: Total horizontal derivative map and the trend lines of potential faults.

Figure 9: Rose diagram indicating the major and minor trends of faults observed from THD map.
Major trends of faults are NW-SE and NE-SW.
Two cross sections along E-W were developed from the Bouguer anomaly map purposely
for 2D modeling (Figure 10 a, b). Models were estimated based on borehole and geological cross
section of the study area consisting mainly of sedimentary rocks. The top Triassic mudstone
density is assigned as 2.34 g/cm3 while the Permo-Triassic sandstone underlying it has a density
of 2.54 g/cm3. The highest density of 2.58 g/cm3 is assigned to the Lower Palaeozoic limestone
basement.

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(a)

(b)
Figure 10: The cross section of (a) Profile 1 and (b) Profile 2 based on 2D inverse modeling.
The results of 2D modeling show the estimate depth to limestone basement of about 3736
m. Gale et al. (1984) reported that the basement depth based on Prees and Knutford boreholes
drilled within the Chesire basin were 3726 m and 2992 m respectively. Therefore the depth to

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basement based on 2D gravity modeling and drilling are quite similar. Interestingly, the 2D
modeling reveals the presence of a basinal sedimentary structure separating the PermoCarboniferous sandstone and mudstone and the Palaeozoic limestone basement. Based on
previous study, coal beds are found in the boarder of sandstone-limestone upper carboniferous
Millstone Grit.

CONCLUSIONS
Gravity anomaly maps were developed from the Oasis Montaj software. The difference in
Bouguer anomalies referred to difference in rock types and densities. The isostatic maps with
different cut-off wavelengths indicate changes in rock compositions in the study area. The THD
Bouguer gravity anomaly maps show NW-SE and NE-SW dominant fault trends. 2D modeling
across several profiles discovered the presence of a sedimentary basin structure and successfully
estimated the depth of limestone basement. Further study will be carried out in future by
integrating gravity, magnetic, seismic and borehole data for detail basin analysis.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The authors appreciate the British Geological Society (BGS) for providing the gravity data
and information needed for this study.

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