GEOPHYSICS, VOL. 45. NO. 9 (SEPTEMBER 1980); P. 1412-1426, 15 FIGS.

, 1 TABLE,
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Some aspects of regional-residual separation of gravity

anomalies in a Precambrian terrain

V. K. Gupta* and N. Ramani*

The Bouguer gravity field measuredover two Archean greenstonebelts of northwesternOntario is analyzed
using three different regional-residual separationtechniques. The purposeof the analysis is to obtain a residual
map suitable for gravity modeling studies to help define the subsurfacecharacteristicsof the greenstonebelts
and associatedgranitic areas.
The methods used to derive the regional and residual maps are spectral factorization, upward continuation,
and graphical smoothing. The substantialdifferences in the three sets of maps emphasize the ambiguity and
subjectivity of the separationprocess. Each method may yield nonuniqueresults. For example, in the spectral
factorization technique, the filter design is dictated by the clarity of the slope change between the short- and
long-wavelength features and, in the case of the upward continuation technique, by the choice of the continua-
tion height. The graphical method is empirical and clearly nonunique.
The regional map obtained through graphical smoothing is the most satisfactoryfor the purposestated since
DOI:10.1190/1.1441130

it has been designedto have minimal contributionsfrom the shallow and broad greenstonemassesoutcropping
at the surface. These features are clearly visible in the spectrum-basedregional map and to a lesser extent in
the upward-continued regional map.
All three types of residual maps follow the general outline of the geologic units and thus are probably equally
useful for a qualitative study of the anomaly shapes. However, for quantitative modeling purposes,the graph-
ically producedresidual is most suitable, since it can be successfullyfitted by models that are consistent with
the known surface geology and measured density values. The location, spatial extent, and the amplitudes of
the analytically produced residual anomalies, in many areas, show poor correlation with the surface measure-
ments. rendering these maps less satisfactory

INTRODUCTION During 1975 and 1976, the Ontario Geological

The separationof the Bouguer gravity field into its
regional and residual components is always an am-
biguous and rather troublesome task. In recent
years, the application of digital filters to achieve this
regional-residualseparationhas become increasingly
popular among geophysicists. However, the effec-
tiveness of these mathematically derived maps from
the viewpoint of quantitative gravity modeling is still
debatable. We discussthe application of the separa-
tion techniques to some actual field data.
Survey carried out a detailed gravity survey of two
Early Precambrian (Archean) greenstone belts of
the Superior Province in northwestern Ontario (Fig-
ure I). The survey was designed to cover a vast area
(21,100 km’) to investigatemineral-rich, near-surface
metavolcanics as well as large crnstal geologic fea-
tures. Both regional and detailed geologic maps were
available for the area at scalesvarying from 1: 12,000
to I : 250,000.
Three regional-residual separation methods were

Manuscriptreceived by the Editor May 24, 1979; revised manuscript received January 14, 1980.
*Ministry of Natural Resources, Ontario Geological Survey, 77 Grenville Street, Room 71 I. Toronto, Ont.. Canada
M5S lB3.
0016-8033/80/0901-1412$03.00. 0 1980 Societyof ExplorationGeophysicists. All rightsreserved
1412
 Regional-residual Separation of Gravity Anomalles 1413

applied to the Bouguer gravity map, namely, upward longitude. Three LaCoste-Romberg gravimeters were
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continuationfilters, spectral factorization techniques,
and visual graphical smoothing. The resulting filtered
maps were then compared with the mapped geology,
and their usefulness for the gravity modeling study
was evaluated.
GRAVITY SURVEY
Theareaofthegravitysurveyextendsfrom50”30’N
to51”45’Nlatitudeandfrom91”45’Wto94”30’W
used to establish 5180 land gravity stations. The
station density varied from at least 1 station per I .5
km2 in areas of mapped metavolcanics to at least I
station per 6 km2 in areas of metasedimentary and
granitoid rocks. The gravity observations were tied
to the control stationsof the national gravity network
of Canada. Terrain corrections were not calculated,
since the relief in the area is relatively flat and the
maximum estimated error from irregular topography

r
DOI:10.1190/1.1441130

STUDY AREA

FIG. 1. Location map.

Downloaded 02/10/24 to 119.172.54.99. Redistribution subject to SEG license or copyright; see Terms of Use at http://library.seg.org/page/policies/terms Gupta and Ramani
DOI:10.1190/1.1441130

FIG. 2. Bouguer gravity anomaly contour map. Contour interval 2 mgal. The locations of profiles E-E’ and
R-R’ are also shown.

does not exceed 0. I mgal. A crustal density of 2.67
g/cm3 was used in the Bouguercorrection. The maxi-
mum expected error (defined as the squareroot of the
sum of the squaresof individual errors) for gravity
stations is about +-OS mgal. The randomly spaced
data were digitized on a grid with a spacing of 1.609
km usinga general purposecontouringprogram which
generatesthe grid by constructing a smooth surface
passing through every data point. The resultant
Bouguer anomaly map is shown in Figure 2.
GENERAL GEOLOGY
The Red Lake and Birch-Uchi Lakes area lies
within the Superior Province of the Canadian shield
and contains mainly Early Precambrian (Archean)
supracrustaland plutonic rocks, covered for the most
part by Pleistocene and Recent unconsolidatedsedi-
ments. The map area (Figure 3) includes portions of
three subprovinces (Ayres et al. 1971): the Berens
River subprovincealong the northern edge, the Eng-
fish River subprovince along the southernedge, and
the Uchi subprovince in the middle.
The Berens River subprovince comprises massive
to gneissic plutonic rocks and scattered remnants of
metavolcanic-metasedimentarybelts. The boundary
with the Uchi subprovince is irregular and poorly de-
fined and has been chosen, somewhat arbitrarily, as
the northern contact of recognizabie Uchi meta-
volcanic rocks (Schwerdtner and Goodwin, 1977).
The Uchi subprovincecomprisesa granitoid terrain
which envelops the Red Lake and Birch-Uchi supra-
crustal greenstone belts and numerous small supra-
crustal belts which are quasi-continuous with the
Birch-Uchi belt. In the two larger belts, the grade of
metamorphism increasestoward the contact with the
surrounding plutonic rocks. The boundary between
the Uchi and English River subprovinces is marked
by an east-west cataclastic zone which separates,
along much of its length, metatexitic metascdi-
mentary migmatite on the south side from mctasedi-
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DOI:10.1190/1.1441130

3
3 :,5

15-> 2‘ 3
‘ \ %+5>’ , +

FIG. 3. Generalized geologic map of the Red Lake and Birch-Uchi greenstone belts compiled from numerous Ontario
intermediate intrusive rocks; 4-intermediate to ultramafic intrusive rocks; 3-mctasedimentary rocks: 2-felsic to in
mediate to mafic metavolcanic rocks; solid line, subprovince boundary; zigzag line, fault.
 1416 Gupta and Ramani

ments and metavolcanics on the north side (Breaks order extrapolation method described by Gupta and
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et al, 1978: Thurston et al, 1978).
The English River subprovince is divided into a
northern supracrustaland a southernplutonic domain
(Breaks et al, 1978). Only the northern domain rocks
lie in the map area and consist of migmatized meta-
sedimentsand a relatively low proportion of plutonic
rocks.
DATA TREATMENT
Regional-residual problem
A major step in the analysis of the gravity data is
the process of isolating observed anomaly patterns
into regional and residual components. The definition
of “regional-residual” is purely subjective and
arbitrary, as best illustrated in a quotation from
Nettleton (1976, p. 135): “The regional is what you
take out in order to make what’s left look like the
structure.” The gravity anomaly is often the sum of
overlapping gravitational effects of two or more
separate geologic structures of varying dimensions
and depths and thus an objective separationcriterion
is not possible. Geologic preconceptionsand personal
DOI:10.1190/1.1441130
Ramani ( 1978) was used to expand the irregular area
to a 135 x 100 grid.
A linear trend was removed from the data using
the method of least squares, becausethe presence of
a dc component and a linear trend distorts the power
estimate. at all frequencies, particularly near the
zero frequency (Kanasewich, 1973: Meyer, 1974).
This plane, which may representgravitational held of
continental scale. was later added to the regional
field before producing contoured maps. Tine i35 x
100 grid was processed in two blocks of 75 X 100
each, with an overlap of 15 X 100. During fast
Fourier transform computations, each block was
extrapolated to a working area of 108 X 108, re-
sulting in a sampling interval (hf‘) of 0.0058
cycles/km.
Optimum filters
Until recently. the regional-residual analysis was
done in the space domain using coefficient sets ap-
proximating the desired response (Mesko. 1965,
1966: Fuller, 1967; Zurflueh, 1967; Darby and
Davies, 1967) or by using trend surface analysis

prejudices are always unavoidable during an inter-

(Coons et al. 1967, 1963; Simpson, 1954). With the
pretation process, and what is one man’s regional
advent of the fast Fourier transform (Cooley and
could be another man’s residual depending upon the
Tukey. 1965), however, it became convenient to use
nature of the information sought from the data.
mathematically defined operators in the frequency
In the area under study, most of the mineral de-
domain for the above filtering operations (Clarke,
posits of economic significance lie within the green-
1969: Spector and Grant, 1970; Ku et al, 1971;
stone belts. Therefore. it is of considerable interest
Meyer. 1974). Recently, Grant ( 1972) reviewed
to unravel their geometry including the depth of
many of the gravity and magnetic interpretation
infolding and subsurface dips. Thus, the following
techniques.
subjective definition of regional and residual was
In the spectral factorization technique, one first
chosen, keeping in mind that these maps will be
computesthe power spectrum of the map and looks
used for future gravity modeling:
for a separation of power with respect tq frequency
that can be attributed to regional and residual com-
(1) The residual map should contain the effects of
ponents. Optimum Wiener filters are then designed
local and near-surface masses. Also, in plan
to separatethe componentsor to enhance or suppress
view, it should be possible to explain most of
specific wavelengths which correspond to certain
the highs and lows by observed geology to-
geologic features. These filters designed from the
gether with density measurements. The pri-
power spectrumare ordinarily unique to a set of data
mary purpose of this map would be to model
after the separationof the componentshas been deter-
the subsurfacetopography of all known gco-
mined on the spectrum plot. However, the process
logic units exposed at the surface.
of regionai-residuaiseparationis stiil subje~ctivesince
(2) The regional map should contain the effects
a clear, unambiguousbreak in the gravity spectrum
of deep crustalfeatures and should not include
is rarely found.
greenstone belts which are known to have a The Wiener (1949) filter theory provides a method
limited depth extent but in some cases are for designing the required filters. The mapped datum
fairly broad. t is assumedto be the sum of a signal s and noise n,
Data
and one wishes to design an “optimum” linear filter
The randomly spaced Bouguer gravity data were whose output d approximates s in some statistical
gridded at a digitization interval of 1.609 km, A first- sense. Under certain assumptions.the optimum filter
 Regional-residual Separation of Gravity Anomalies 1417

26 the regional, residual. and noise portions of the data

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from the power spectrum.

Power spectrum
In general. power spectra of gravity data can be
roughly divided into three segments. The part at the
low-frequency (long wavelength) end of the spectrum
with a steep slope in power is termed regional. that
is, due to sourcesthat are deep and/or broad. At high
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.6 1.0
frequencies (short wavelengths), the residual part has
a flatter slope and is due to relatively shallow sources.
Radial Frequencyf inUnits OffN ( fN’O.311 Cycles/km)
Spector and Grant (1970) showedthat a single straight
FIG. 4. Radial component of the power spectrum of lint fitted to a part of the spectrum correspondsto a
the Bouguer gravity map. single average depth. At very high frequencies. the
spectrumis dominated by the effects due to measure-
ment errors, digitizing errors. etc. The spectralpower
of the random errors is independentof the frequency,
has a response Hopt(f) which minimizes the mean and thus the spectrum flattens out at the high-
squareerror between d and s and is given by (in the frequency end.
frequency domain) The two-dimensional power spectrum, which is
computed by squaring the absolute value of the 2-D
9,(f) _ P,(f)
Hopt(f) = (1) Fourier transform, was radially averaged to yield the
Ps(f) + P,(f) P,(f 1 ’ spectrum P(f). The use of the radial average has a
where f is the frequency, Ps(f) is the signal power, smoothing effect on the spectrum and also simplifies
DOI:10.1190/1.1441130

P,,(f)is the noisepower, and Pt(f) is the total power. the design of the filters. The spectrum was plotted on
Thus. the procedure involves (1) obtaining the two- a logarithmic scale (natural logarithm of the power
dimensional(2-D) Fourier transform of the input data, versus the frequency), and straight line asymptotes
(2) computingthe power spectrum, and (3) estimating were drawn on the spectral plot at the low- and high-
frequency ends. The two lines were connected by a
smooth curve to allow for the overlap of the com-
ponent powers. Figure 4 shows the power spectrum
(a) divided into its regional, residual, and noise com-
ponents.
The part of the spectrum below 0.034 (i.e.. 0.1 I
,f~) cycles/km was decided upon as the regional
and the part from 0.034 (i.e., 0.1 I ,f;v) to 0.31 I
(i.e., I .O fN) cycles/km was classified as the resid-
ual, where ,fhris the Nyquist frequency (0.3 I 1 cycles/
km). The white noise level, In (Pn) = I I .5, was
Radial Frequency (f ) determined by smoothly extrapolating the high-
frequency end of the power spectrum to a constant
level. As stated earlier. this separation is subjective
I (b) since the spectrum is mostly smooth and a clear cut
In P Cf) break is not evident.

Filter design

White The optimum filters can easily be calculated from

Noise Level the spectrum as follows: In Figure 5a at a particular
frequency f. let x(f) be the signal power and y(,f)
Radials Frequ~cy~<f; the white noise power, then from equation (i j

FIG. 5. Calculation of the optimum filters from the

spectrum.
H,,,(f) = zt
 1418 Gupta and Ramani

:,-eE+
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t
,Ylfl
=I-
,Ixcf)+rcfll
= 1 -p'f', (2)
Similarly, if z(f) is the logarithmic distance be-
tween the chosen residual level and the spectrum
(Figure Sb), the optimum regional filter is given by 0.2 -

H,,,(f) = I - c*(fl, (3) I.

0.0 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.06 0.10 0.12
and the optimum residual filter is given by
Radial Frequency f in Units of f,( f, ~0.311 Cycles/km)
H,,,(f) = 11 - k&f)1 . H,,,(f). (4)

In the current study, H,,(O) was set equal to unity FIG. 6. Radial frequency domain response of the
optimum regional filter Hreg(f).
(Figure 6) in order to include all the low-frequency
components in the regional. This requires slight ad-
justment in the responsecurve in the zero-frequency
region.
The regional and residual filter responses, so de-
signed, are shown in Figures 6 and 7, respectively. product of the filter and the Fourier transform of the
The regional filter is’s low-pass filter which falls off original map.
to 0 at 0.034 (i.e., 0. I I&) cycles/km and has a cut-
DOI:10.1190/1.1441130

off at 0.031 (i.e., O.I_/h) cycles/km (Figure 6). In
this work, the cut-off has been defined as the fre-
quency at which the gain falls to 20 percent of the
peak. The residual filter is a band-pass filter with a
i0w frequency cut-off at O.Oi2 (i.e., 0.04,fvj cydesi
km and a high frequency cut-off at 0.274 (i.e.,
0.88f~) cycles/km (Figure 7).
From the radial filter operator, the equivalent 2-D
filter is first calculated. The filtered map is then cal-
culated by taking the inverse Fourier transform of the
Upward continuation
Analytic continuation of the potential field verti-
cally upward has often been used to approximate a
regional map (Fuller, 1967; Henderson, 1960; Peters,
i949). When the Fourier transform of the mappemd
data is known, it is a simple matter to obtain the con-
tinued maps by applying the following upward con-
tinuation regional filter (Dean, 1958):
Hreg,"p(.f) = ,-enhf> (5)

1)

0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0

Radial Frequency f inbits of fN(fN =0.311 Cycles/km)

Radial frequency domain response of the optimum residual filter H,.,,(f).

 Regional-residual Separation of Gravity Anomalies 1419

Residual where h is the continuation height. The map con-

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tinued to a height of 16.09 km (IO grid units) was

taken to be the regional gravity field. The residual
field was obtained by applying to the Bouguer field
an upward continuation based residual filter given by

H res,up(.f)= II - Hr,,,,,(~)I . H,,t(f’L (6)

The radial frequency responsesof both the regional
and residual upward continuation filters are shown in
Figure 8.

Graphical separation

0.0 o.02 o.o4 0.06 0.08 0.10 0.12 To estimate the regional gravity field. 28 north-
Regional
southand 2 1 east-west Bouguer gravity profiles were
Rsdial Frequency f m units of f, (f, = 0.311 cycles I km)
drawn at 8.045.km intervals. On each profile the
level of the regional field was visually estimated by
FIG. 8. Radial frequency domain responses of the
upward continued regional Hreg,up(,f), residual considering the influence on the gravity field due to
H res.up(f) fibs. localized geologic features. It was ensured that at
DOI:10.1190/1.1441130

FIG. 9. Spectrum-basedregional component of the Bouguer gravity map

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DOI:10.1190/1.1441130

FIG. 10. Regional component of the Bouguer gravity map obtained from an upward continuation to a height of
16.09 km (10 grid units).

profile intersectionsthe value of the regional field was
consistent. Trondhjemitic and granodioritic (rock
unit 5. Figure 3) areas were considered to represent
‘he background gravity field. The resulting regional
gravity field was hand digitized at 8.045-km grid
interval from which a I ,609.km grid was generated
for automatic contouring of the regional field. The
1.609.km regional grid values then were subtracted
from the Bouguer gravity map to obtain a residual
gravity map.
DISCUSSION OF THE MAPS
A comparisonof the regional maps (Figures 9, 10,
and 1i) shows that they are increasingly smoothed.
The degree of smoothness in the spectrum-based
(Figure 9) and upward-continued(Figure IO) regional
mapsdependsupon the cut-off wavelength chosenand
the continuationheight, respectively. However, in the
graphical regional map (Figure I I), it dependspurely
upon the personaljudgment of the interpreter.
Becauseof the different degrees of smoothnessof
the regional maps, the corresponding residual maps
(Figures 12, 13, and 14) are, of necessity, different.
All the residual maps generally follow the outlines of
the geologic units and are probably equally useful
for studying anomaly shapes and trends. Some dis-
crepancies, however, are noted in the spectrum and
upward-based residual maps, as discussed in a later
section.
Regional maps
In the spectrum-based regional map (Figure 9).
broad circular gravity highs are obtained over both
the Red Lake and Birch-Uchi greenstone belts and
gravity lows are observed over the granitic plutons.
Near the southern border of the map area. the east-
west trending linear gravity contourscoincide with the
boundary between the Uchi and English River sub-
provinces. Also, the total crust is believed to be of
lesserthicknessunder the English River subprovince.
Ttie upward-continued regional map (Figure 10)
shows a similarity to the spectrum-based regional
 Regional-residual Separation of Gravity Anomalies
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DOI:10.1190/1.1441130
FIG. 11. Graphically separated regional component of the Bouguer gravity map
map, except that the regional highs over the green-
stone belts are less pronounced and are no longer
delineated by closed contours. These regional highs
centered over the greenstone belts are most likely
due to the relatively high-density upper crustal green-
stone rocks (Gupta and Wadge, 1980).
The graphically constructedregional map (Figure
11) shows an east-west trending gravity low where
the contours take the form of concentric ellipses,
occupying the whole map area. The regional field
has been explained entirely by the undulationson the
Riel and Mohorovicic discontinuities (Gupta and
Wadge, 1980). It should be noted that the Riel dis-
continuity, in northwestern Ontario and Manitoba,
defined by Hall and Hajnal (1973) is similar to the
Conrad discontinuity in Europe.
Residual maps
The spectrum-based residual map (Figure 12)
shows isolated negative residual anomalies within
certain locations that coincide with terrain of higher
1421
than backgrounddensity, namely, intermediate intru-
sives (areas 1 and 6), metasediments(areas 2, 4, and
5), and mafic metavolcanics (areas 2 and 3, Figure
12). These six areas of poor correlation show only a
slight improvement in the upward continuation based
residual map (Figure 13).
The correlation of the residual anomalies with sur-
face geology is now discussedalong two gravity pro-
files drawn across the center of the two greenstone
belts. Profiles E-E’ and R-R’ (Figures 2 and 15), on
which the regional fields are drawn from the appro-
priate maps, are considered. On profile E-E’ (Fig-
ure 15a) between locations A to B and D to F, the
negative residual anomalies produced from the spec-
tral factorization and the upward continuation
methods correspond to anomalously high-density
areas. Similarly, in the region B to C they coincide
with outcrops of predominantly trondhjemitic and
granodioritic rocks which are considered to represent
the background density (2.69 g/cm3) of the upper
crust in this area. On profile R-R’ (Figure 15b), be-
 1422 Gupta and Ramani

tween the location I to J and K to L, the negative Table 1. Residual anomaly amplitudes on profiles E-E’
residualanomaliesof the spectrumand upward-based and R-R’.
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residual field correspond to the known anomalously

Pr0tile Residualamplitude(mgal)
high-density rocks on the surface,
Thus. in some cases, for both the spectrum-based Spectral Upward Graphical
and upward continuation based residual maps. the E-E’ II 18 27
highs and lows and their spatial extent are unrelated R-R’ IO I3 23
to observedgeology and densities. This is particularly
disadvantageous where information concerning
dips. contact locations. and densities of different
geologic units (of known density) must be used in
gravity modeling studies, which extrapolate this The amplitudes of the residual anomalies on pro-
geologic and physical property data from ground files E-E’ and R-R’ have been compared, in Table I,
surfaceto depth. It is quite possible that a shift in the over the greenstone areas.
datum (-5 to -10 mgal) of the spectrum and It is noted from Table 1 that for the spectrum-
upward-based residual fields will improve their based and upward-based residual maps, the ampli-
correlation with the surface geology, especially in tude of the positive residual anomalies decreases
the problem areas mentioned earlier. However, the considerably over the greenstone areas. Conversely,
choice of a constant datum shift for the entire map the amplitudes are increased over the granitic areas
area would create distortions elsewhere. compared to the graphical residuals. This will have
DOI:10.1190/1.1441130

h-A
20 0 20
Km

FIG. 12. Spectrum-basedresidual component of the Bouguer gravity map. Contour interval is 2 mgal. Positive
contoursare shown in dark, negative contoursare shown in light, and zero contour is shown by the black line.
Areas I to 6 identified in the text are also shown.
 Regional-residual Separation of Gravity Anomalies
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DOI:10.1190/1.1441130

FIG. 13. Residual component of the Bouguer gravity map obtained from an upward continuation to a height of
16.09 km. Contour interval is 2 mgal. Positive contours are shown in dark, negative contours are shown in
light, and zero contour is shown by the black line.

the effect that the filtered maps (Figures 12 and 13) able for gravity modeling in conjunction with the
will underestimate the thickness of the greenstone known surface geology. As discussed in the pre-
bodies and overestimate the thickness of the granitic ceding sections, the spectrum and upward continua-
bodies. tion based maps do not satisfy this requirement.
In contrast, the graphical residual map (Figure 14) For the spectrum-based technique, the difficulty
was designed with a knowledge of the known geol- encounteredis related to the lack of a clear-cut break
ogy, and therefore most of the problems encountered in the power spectrum. The separation of power re-
with the analytical residual maps were avoided. quired for the design of the filters thus becomes sub-
Positive residual anomalies were obtained in areas jective. Also, the problem is complicated by the
where they could be related to the surface rocks and/ presence of very few points on the spectrum curve
or with measureddensity values. Similarly, negative in the low-frequency region.
residualanomalies were obtained where the observed The upward continuation technique is also sub-
field produced definite gravity lows that could be jective becauseof the continuation height which must
partially correlated on the surface, with the measured be selected by trial and error. For example, three
densities of granitoid and felsic volcanic rocks. upward continued maps to heights of 8.05 km, 16.09
km, and 24.15 km were considered in this study. The
An assessmentof the maps
8.05 km upward continued map was qualitatively
One of the primary purposes of the separation of similar to the spectrum-based regional map (Figure
the regional and residual components, as stated in a 9), although the anomaly amplitudes were somewhat
previous section, is to produce a residual map suit- different. The 24.15 km upward continued map was
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DOI:10.1190/1.1441130

FIG. 14. Graphically separatedresidual component of the Bouguer gravity map. Contour interval is 2 mgal.
Positive contours are shown in dark, negative contours are shown in light, and zero contour is shown by the
black line.

suffering from edge effects, and thus the continuation
height of 16.09 km (10 grid units) was decided upon.
The graphical regional map (Figure 11) is smooth
and the greenstone belt anomalies are entirely con-
tained in the residual map (Figure 14). The east-west
trending regional anomalies are in good agreement
with the map prepared by Innes (1960) from the
regionally spaced gravity stations established in
granitic terrain only. Innes explained the regional
field in terms of varying crustal thicknessesand den-
sity variations in the granitic rocks themselves. The
corresponding graphical residual map (Figure 14)
was designed by taking into consideration the known
geology and density values. This map, therefore, is
particularly suitable for gravity modeling purposes.
Thus, in accordancewith the definition of the regional
‘and residual, the graphically producedmaps are taken
to be the most satisfactory.
SUMMARY
The problem of regional-residual separation of
gravity data in an Archean greenstone belt has been
discussed,based upon data collected from 5 180 land
gravity stations.The various mapsemphasize the sub-
jectivity of the regional-residual analysis techniques.
The graphical methods are fully subjective and em-
pirical, but are highly flexible in that factors such as
measured densities and geologic information can be
taken into account. The analytical methods attempt
to minimize personal biases, but subjectivity must
still be exercised by the geophysicist in selecting the
appropriate mathematical criteria.
In the case under study, the primary interest was
in obtaining a residual map which would help in
defining the subsurfacegeometry of all the geologic
units exposed at the surface. Consistent with this
purpose, a subjective definition of regional and re-
sidual fields was decided upon. Maps based upon
spectral factorization and upward continuation tech-
niques, using the best judgment of the authors, are
not satisfactory from this point of view. The broad
and shallow greenstone belt anomalies are clearly
 Regional-residual Separation of Gravity Anomalies 1425
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.
3 5 5 2 2 2 ,a 3 5
1
T ,
T T
SC% 5 ,a 2a NC%

- mnrl
Background
______
O-?n.uiy
___--_Gg-___
u LILII
DOI:10.1190/1.1441130

*,?a ’

5 5 ta 2 ,a 5
T T
R I 2a 2a d
East West

FIG. 1.5.Profiles E-E’ and R-R’ (for location, see Figure 2) showing the Bougueranomaly; the spectrum-based,
upward continuation based, and graphically smoothed regional fields. A plot of the mean densities and the
mappedrock units is also shown. Rock units la and 2a are mafic and intermediate metavolcanics, respectively.
For a complete geologic legend, see the caption of Figure 3.

visible in the analytically produced regional maps.
The corresponding residual anomalies are too small
in amplitude over the greenstonezones and too large
over the granitic areas. Also, in some cases, the
residual highs and lows and their spatial extents show
poor correlation with the observed geologic and den-
sity information, rendering these maps unsatisfactory
for gravity modeling. In fairness, however, it should
be pointed out that the spectral and continuation
methods were originally developed to handle oil
exploration problems in sedimentary basins where
there is often a good separation of anomaly charac-
teristics.
All three types of residual maps obtained follow
the general outline of the various geologic units and
are useful for a qualitative analysis where anomaly
trends and shapesare studied. However, in the study
area, for quantitative gravity modeling purposes
graphically smoothed regional-residual maps pro-
duced with a definite bias toward the local geology
are required.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
During the course of this study, numerous dis-
cussionswere held with F. S. Grant and J. Misener,
and their assistanceis gratefully acknowledged. The
authors also wish to thank K. B. S. Burke for
critically reviewing the manuscript. The MAGMAP
system developed by Paterson, Grant, and Watson
Limited was used for most of the computations. This
paper is published with permission of the Director,
Ontario Geological Survey.
 1426 Gupta and Ramani
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