Journal of Applied Geophysics, vol.88, pp.105-113, 2013 (SCI-Expanded)
The Erzurum Basin has received more attention in petroleum potential
research because of its particularity in geographic and tectonic
position. There remains debate on the basement structure of the basin
since igneous rocks and faults make the structure and stratigraphy more
complicated. We utilize gravity data to understand the structure of the
Erzurum Basin. This study describes an edge enhancement technique based
on the eigenvalues and determinant obtained from the curvature gravity
gradient tensor (CGGT). The main goal of this technique is to delineate
structural boundaries in complex geology and tectonic environment using
CGGT. The results obtained from theoretical data, with and without
Gaussian random noise, have been analyzed in determining the locations
of the edges of the vertical-sided prism models. The zero contours of
the smallest eigenvalue delineate the spatial location of the edges of
the anomalous sources. In addition, 3-D gravity inversion of Bouguer
anomalies has been used with purpose to estimate the structure of the
substrata to allow modeling of the basement undulation in the Erzurum
basin. For this reason, the Parker–Oldenburg algorithm helped to
investigate this undulation and to evidence the main linear features.
This algorithm reveals presence of basement depths between 3.45 and 9.06
km in the region bounded by NE–SW and E–W trending lineaments. We have
also compared the smallest eigenvalue zero contours with the HGM images
and Tilt derivative (TDR) of Bouguer anomaly map of the study area. All
techniques have agreed closely in detecting the horizontal locations of
geological features in the subsurface with good precision.