OVERVIEW This course is designed to provide basic exposure at the undergraduate level of the mathematical tools and numerical methods used in the analysis and interpretation of geophysical data. In geophysics, we make field and laboratory measurements (observations) of Earth systems, and its is the objective of the geophysicist to draw from these data inferences about the distribution of the physical parameters of the systems or corresponding scaled models. Often, however, the data obtained are noisy or are incomplete, and insufficient. Hence, prior to interpretation, it may be necessary to enhance the data and remove the additive errors and the biasing influence of the measuring instruments. |
Data enhancement is achieved by application of the principals of Filter Theory, and modeling and interpretation by systematic application of the laws of physics and use of the powerful tools of Geophysical Inverse Theory. Geophysical data processing is computer intensive, as the size of data dealt with is massive and the number of model parameters is very large. For instance, a typical reflection seismic marine survey ship can collect about a trillion (1012) bits of information per month. Such massive amounts of data require both statistical reduction and the ability to compute theoretical solutions in many-parameter earth models. |