Applications Of Gravity Anomalies In Geophysics

Knowledge of the density of the subsurface of a planet is crucial in determining its interior structure, and one can estimate the average bulk crustal density directly using the admittance between topography and gravity, which has been successfully used for the Moon and is being extended to Mars. The interpretation of gravity data is commonly done by computation of a gravity anomaly (GA) by correcting the raw data for a number of factors that impact the gravity field. Depending on the target science, different types of GA can be computed, the interpretation of which have been widely employed in geophysics to explore the interior of the Earth and other planets, through applications in airborne gravity, near-surface geophysics, regional geophysics, and planetary geophysics. Yet how to extract a great variety of information from GAs for applications in geophysics entails further investigation. Over the decades, remarkable progress has been made to extract information from GAs identified from data. For instance, a series of 3D inversion algorithms facilitates the extraction of the subsurface density distribution. With the improved processing based on dense gravity observations that yield high precision and high resolution GAs, more detailed geological information can be unveiled. When using the admittance between topography and gravity to estimate the crustal density, it is essential to identify what kinds of GAs to be used, such as Bouguer gravity or free-air gravity. Also, what appropriate approaches to scrutinize the applications of GAs in various case studies (e.g., calculating the geoid and estimating the elastic thickness) need to be decoded.