Robust inversion analysis of local gravity anomalies caused by geological dislocation model of faults

Theoretical analysis and practical observations show that fault dislocations can change the gravity field around the fault. Gravity changes which were caused by the repeated dislocations over a long period of time were superimposed on the Bougeur gravity anomalies. These anomalies became the evidence of historical movement of fault as well as provide a way for the study of paleo earthquakes. This paper investigates inversion methods for the geological dislocation modeling of faults using the local Bouguer's gravity anomalies. To remove the effects of the irrelevant part of gravity anomalies to fault movements, we propose the robust nonlinear inversion method and set up the corresponding algorithm. Modeling examples indicate that the Marquardt's and Baye's least squares solutions depart from the true solution due to the attraction of gross errors in the data. The more seriously the data is contaminated, the more seriously the solutions are biased. In contrast, the proposed robust Marquardt's and Baye's inversion solutions can still maintain consistency with the solution without gross errors, even though 50 percent of the data is contaminated. This indicates that the proposed robust methods are effective. Using the proposed methods, we invert the geological dislocation models of the faults around the Erhai Lake in West Yunnan. The results show that the Northern Cangdong fault and the Erhai fault are normal dip slip faults with about 4 to 5 km dislocations; and that the Southern Cangdong fault has a less dip slip compared with the former two. A satisfactory fitting between the theoretical values of the inversion solution and the actual local gravity field is achievable.