Numerical Differentiation of Electroprospecting Data for Resolution Enhancement

Abstract

Differential electroprospecting methods provide an efficient technique to search for mineral deposits, but technical difficulties have so far prevented their widespread use. A stable method is available for numerical differentiation of functions defined by tabular data with errors. The method relies on integral splines. The present article applies the integral spline method to process electromagnetic sounding data. The efficiency of the numerical method is analyzed by modeling magnetotelluric fields in twodimensional nonhomogeneous media. The results show that numerical differentiation of profile curves can be efficiently applied for resolution enhancement in magnetotelluric sounding with the purpose of identifying structural features of the medium longitudinally to the Earth’s surface.