Singularity analysis of potential fields to enhance weak anomalies

Geoanomalies generally are nonlinear, non-stationary and weak, especially in the land cover areas, however, the traditional methods of geoanomaly identification are usually based on linear theory. In past two decades, many power-law function models have been developed based on fractal concept in mineral exploration and mineral resource assessment, such that the density-area (C-A) model and spectrum-area model (S-A) suggested by Qiuming Cheng have played important roles in extracting geophysical and geochemical anomalies. Several power-law relationships are evident in geophysical potential fields, such as field value-distance, power spectrum-wave number as well as density-area models. The singularity index based on density-area model involves the first derivative transformation of the measure. Hence, we introduce the singularity analysis to develop a novel high-pass filter for extracting gravity and magnetic anomalies with the advantage of scale invariance. Furthermore, we suggest that the statistics of singularity indices can provide a new edge detection scheme for the gravity or magnetic source bodies. Meanwhile, theoretical magnetic anomalies are established to verify these assertions. In the case study from Nanling mineral district in south China and Qikou Depression in east China, compared with traditional geophysical filtering methods including multiscale wavelet analysis and total horizontal gradient methods, the singularity method enhances and extracts the weak anomalies caused by buried magmatic rocks more effectively, and provides more distinct boundary information of rocks. Moreover, the singularity mapping results have good correspondence relationship with both the outcropping rocks and known mineral deposits to support future mineral resource exploration. The singularity method based on fractal analysis has potential to be a new useful theory and technique for processing gravity and magnetic anomaly data.