Theory and Practice of Geophysical Data Inversion

The contributions to this volume cover a wide spectrum of recent developments in geophysical data inversion, including basic mathematics and general theory, numerical methods, as well as computer implementation of algorithms. Most of the papers are motivated by problems arising from geophysical research and applications both on a global scale and with respect to local geophysical surveys, underlining the increasing importance of geophysical exploration methods in various fields, such as structural geology, prospecting for mineral and energy resources, hydro- geology, geotechnology, environmental protection and archaeology. The first section of the book deals with basic mathematics and general theory underlying geophysical data inversion. Papers presented here are concerned with stabilization algorithms to solve ill-posed inverse problems, sensitivity of kernel function estimations to random data errors and reduction of errors in inverse modelling of response functions by linear constraints, numerical procedures for approximating the solution to boundary value problems, accuracy and stability of inverse ill-posed problems constituted by problems of moments, and fast Fourier transforms for solving potential field problems. The second section contains papers on gravity and magnetics, dealing with the solvability of the inverse gravimetric problem for sources represented by point masses and other elementary, solution of the inverse problem in cases of nonuniformly distributed data as obtained by palaeomagnetic studies, satellite observations, and surface projections of buried archaeological targets by inverse filtering of geomagnetic data.