Sensitivity and inversion of marine electromagnetic data in a vertically anisotropic stratified earth

The controlled‐source electromagnetic (CSEM) and magnetotelluric method (MT) are two techniques that can be jointly used to explore the resistivity structure of the earth. Such methods have, in recent years, been applied in marine environments to the exploration and appraisal of hydrocarbons. In many situations the electric properties of the earth are anisotropic, with differences between resistivity in the vertical direction typically much higher than those in the horizontal direction. In cases such as this, the two modes of the time‐harmonic electromagnetic field are altered in different ways, implying that the sensitivity to the earth resistivity may vary significantly from one particular resistivity component (scalar, horizontal or vertical) to another, depending on the measurement configuration (range, azimuth, frequency or water depth). In this paper, we examine the sensitivity of the electromagnetic field to a vertically anisotropic earth for a typical set of configurations, compare inversion results of synthetic data characterizing a vertically anisotropic earth obtained using the isotropic and anisotropic assumptions and show that correctly accounting for anisotropy can prevent artefacts in inversion results.