Structural interpretation of the Erzurum Basin, eastern Turkey, using curvature gravity gradient tensor and gravity inversion of basement relief

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. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.