ES 180: Geophysics of Natural Resources

Steven Constable and Alistair Harding

The objective of this course is to familiarize students with the principles underlying modern geophysical techniques used in the exploration and exploitation of petroleum and mineral resources, engineering, archeology, and groundwater geology. A basic understanding of physics and mathematics is desirable for this course (the ES103 requirement need not be met). Assessment is by means of weekly assignments and final examination.

4 units, 3 lecture hours/week, Spring Quarter

Topics Included:

• Gravity. Gravity fields and potential, the geoid, gravimeter design, data collection techniques and data reduction.
• Magnetics: Magnetic fields and potential, magnetic properties of rocks, Earth's magnetic field, magnetometer design, field techniques.
• Electrical and Electromagnetic methods: Electric field and potential, electrical properties of rocks, resistivity, self potential and induced polarization methods, electromagnetic sounding and mapping.
• Introduction to Seismology: Seismic wave types, reflection and refraction at an interface, travel times and wavefronts, seismic response of layered structure, refraction method, data acquisition methods on land and sea, equipment.
• Seismic reflection: Convolution, digital methods for recording, filtering, and deconvolution of data, velocity analysis, stacking, common depth point method, migration, static shifts.
• Geophysical interpretation: Excess mass calculation in gravity, modelling the gravity and magnetic response of known structures, depth rules in gravity and magnetics, curve fitting in resistivity, simple inversion for resistivity structure, interpretation of seismic refraction data for dipping layered structure.

Last Revised 17 Dec, 1994