Quasi-2-D Robust Inversion of Semi-Airborne Transient Electromagnetic Data With IP Effects

Semi-airborne transient electromagnetic (SATEM) method has been efficiently used recently in geophysical exploration due to its relatively portability compared to the standard airborne surveys. However, the SATEM data are often complicated by induced polarization (IP) effects manifesting as abnormal decay and sign reversal in the responses. The IP information can be extracted from SATEM data by joint inversion of the electromagnetic data into the electrical resistivity and IP parameters described in Cole–Cole model. In this article, we introduce a quasi-2-D inversion scheme to recover the resistivity and IP parameters from SATEM responses by: 1) a fast semi-analytical method for Jacobian matrix calculation and 2) a staged inversion strategy with lateral constraints. The methodology is examined on two synthetic polarized models. Our study indicates that the proposed scheme can improve inversion stability and recover the underground resistivity and IP property distributions.