Journal of Applied Geophysics 68 (2009) 533–545

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Journal of Applied Geophysics

j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w. e l s ev i e r. c o m / l o c a t e / j a p p g e o

Three-dimensional inversion of magnetotelluric data including sea effects obtained

in Pohang, Korea
Nuree Han a, Myung Jin Nam b, Hee Joon Kim c,⁎, Tae Jong Lee b, Yoonho Song b, Jung Hee Suh d,1
a
Department of Energy Resources Engineering, Seoul National University, Korea
b
Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources, Korea
c
Department of Energy Resources Engineering, Pukyong National University, Korea
d
Department of Civil, Urban and Geosystem Engineering, Seoul National University, Korea

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Magnetotelluric (MT) surveys were conducted in Pohang, Korea, for low-temperature geothermal
Received 31 May 2008 exploration in 2002 and 2003. Pohang is located in the southeastern part of the Korean Peninsula and
Accepted 7 April 2009 close to the East Sea. In the interpretation of MT data from a coastal environment, sea effects must be
correctly included because seawater is a strong conductor. We first constructed a five-layered earth model
Keywords:
with a realistic coastline and bathymetry to investigate sea effects on MT data measured in Pohang. This
Three-dimension
Magnetotelluric
model clearly shows that the Pohang data are significantly influenced by sea water at frequencies blow 1 Hz
Inversion at the whole measurement sites. Next, we utilized a three-dimensional inversion algorithm based on the
Sea effect Gauss–Newton approach to produce a reliable resistivity model. Seawater is excluded from the inversion
Pohang domain to fix the resistivity, while included in the modeling domain to simulate sea effects on MT responses.
Blocks for the sub-seafloor are included in unknown parameters since they are sufficiently close to the survey
area to affect MT responses in Pohang. Static shifts are also considered in inversion for more accurate
interpretation. The rms data misfit is smoothly reduced from 11.2 to 1.87 after 7 iterations. The resulting
resistivity model shows a pattern of low–high–low resistivity with depth. The model is compatible with
resistivity logs obtained from four boreholes in the survey area, and can explain major geological features in
Pohang.
© 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Three-dimensional (3D) magnetotelluric (MT) surveys have been
conducted in Pohang, Korea, to investigate low-temperature geother-
mal resources in 2002 and 2003 by Korea Institute of Geoscience and
Mineral Resources (KIGAM). Pohang is located in the southeastern
part of the Korean Peninsula, close to the East Sea. The boundary
between the sea and land induces severe distortion on electric and
magnetic fields because of its high contrast in conductivity. Thus MT
data obtained near the seashore are not free from sea effects especially
at low frequencies. Consequently, it is necessary to consider sea effects
for accurate interpretation of MT data obtained in Pohang.
Several efforts have been made to identify or to correct sea effects
on MT data. Pous et al. (2002) and Monteiro Santos et al. (2006) used
a forward modeling algorithm to find out frequencies at which MT
data are distorted by sea effects, and then carried out inversion
⁎ Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: world3@snu.ac.kr (N. Han), nmj1203@gmail.com (M.J. Nam),
hejkim@pknu.ac.kr (H.J. Kim), megi@kigam.re.kr (T.J. Lee), song@kigam.re.kr (Y. Song).
1
Deceased.
utilizing only undistorted MT data. Monteiro Santos et al. (1999) and
Nam et al. (2008) suggested correction methods to remove sea effects
from MT data before interpretation. All these researches prefer not
to use distorted data. However, to interpret deep regions more
accurately, 3D inversion including sea effects, which directly uses all
data, is necessary. The 3D inversion including sea effects is challenging
since we have to deal with both the high contrast in conductivity
between sea and land and the complexity in delineating coastline and
seafloor topography.
To interpret the MT data obtained in Pohang, Lee et al. (2007)
conducted a preliminary 3D inversion including the sea nearby. The
preliminary study yielded an improved resistivity model by including
sea effects when compared with the inversion disregarding sea
effects. The study simplified the coastline into a straight line and
assumed a flat seafloor of 1.5 km depth, resulting in a sharp vertical
contact between land and sea. Moreover, resistivities of blocks for the
sub-seafloor were fixed, although the coastline is only about 9 km
away from the survey area. The inversion used sensitivities only for an
initial homogeneous half-space model throughout the process to
reduce computation time.
In this study, we first conduct 3D modeling including a realistic
coastline and seafloor topography near Pohang. Calculated MT

0926-9851/$ – see front matter © 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jappgeo.2009.04.001
534 N. Han et al. / Journal of Applied Geophysics 68 (2009) 533–545

Fig. 1. A geological map around the Pohang MT survey area. Red dots and white stars represent 70 measurement sites and four boreholes, respectively, and a black box near the
Heunghae basin shows an area for 3D inversion of Pohang MT data (modified from Lee et al. (2007)). (For interpretation of the references to color in this figure legend, the reader is
referred to the web version of this article.)

responses are compared with measured data to analyze the sea effects developed by Sasaki (1999). The algorithm solves a second-order
over the survey area. Based on the Gauss–Newton (GN) approach, we vector Helmholtz equation for electric fields using a finite difference
conduct 3D inversion of Pohang MT data, which excludes the sea from method (FDM) with a staggered grid (Yee, 1966), in which electric
unknown parameters while includes the sub-seafloor. In the inversion fields are defined along the cell edges and magnetic fields on the
process, exact sensitivities are utilized to obtain the most accurate centers of cell faces. As a Dirichlet boundary condition, tangential
results, and they are evaluated efficiently through parallel computation. components of electric fields are calculated analytically for a 1D host
In the inversion, static shifts are also considered as unknown parameters model on the boundaries of a modeling domain. In this study, the
to interpret the Pohang data more accurately. Reconstructed resistivity calculation of boundary values is modified to be proper to the
images are compatible with geological and geophysical logs, which were modeling of MT responses in Pohang. A uniform value is assigned to
obtained from four deep boreholes in the survey area, and can explain the magnetic field on the top of the computing domain to represent
major geological features in Pohang. the plane-wave source. In the modeling of MT responses in Pohang,
the constructed model has a regional 2D structure because the East
2. MT surveys in Pohang Sea exists on its right-hand side. Due to the high contrast in
conductivities between sea and land, electric and magnetic fields
Fig. 1 shows a site map of the MT survey superimposed on a experience abrupt changes near the coastline that extends to the
geological map of the survey area, which is close to the East Sea. north and south boundaries of the modeling domain. In order to
The survey area lies in the Tertiary Pohang Basin, which overlies
Cretaceous sedimentary rocks with shale, sandstone, rhyolite, and
trachybasalt intrusions (Lee et al., 2007). The Pohang Basin consists of
Miocene marine sediments and a clastic sediment layer at the base.
The Heunghae Basin, which is a northern part of the Pohang Basin, is
covered with Quaternary alluvium underlain by thick Tertiary
sediments, which are characterized by a semi-consolidated and highly
conductive mudstone (b10 ohm-m).
A total of 70 measurements were made using MTU-5A systems
manufactured by Phoenix Geophysics. MT data from 44 sites, which are
located within the rectangle in Fig. 1, are used for 3D inversion. Prior to
the interpretation, remote reference processing was applied to the MT
data with reference fields obtained in Kyushu, Japan, which is about
480 km apart from Pohang. The longest distance between measurement
sites and the East Sea is only about 9 km, which is quite short in a sense of
the skin depth (about 40 km) of a 100 ohm-m homogeneous medium at
the lowest frequency (0.0159 Hz) used for 3D inversion.

3. Forward modeling
Fig. 2. A plan view of the Pohang model which consists of five layers and sea on the
To investigate sea effects, which may affect MT data in Pohang, we right-hand side. The model is horizontally discretized with a uniform grid of 1 km and
first calculate MT responses using a 3D forward modeling algorithm the bathymetry is expressed with 13 steps of depths.
 N. Han et al. / Journal of Applied Geophysics 68 (2009) 533–545 535

Fig. 3. Comparisons of sounding curves between measured (circles and diamonds) and calculated (pluses and crosses) MT responses at stations PHG-103 (a) and PHG-116 (b), the
farthest and nearest measuring sites to the sea, respectively, as shown in Fig. 2. The vertical bars denote standard deviations of measured responses.

properly consider these abrupt changes on the boundaries, we first functions Tx and Ty, which relate the horizontal magnetic fields to the
compute electric fields on the north and south boundaries through vertical magnetic fields as Hz = Tx Hx + Ty Hy (Vozoff, 1991).
2D forward modeling and then use them as boundary values for the
3D modeling. 4. Inversion
The large differences between resistivities of land and sea can
cause larger numerical errors resulting in bad convergence rate of A 3D inversion algorithm based on the GN approach (Han et al.,
an iterative solver like the bi-conjugate gradient method (Smith, 2008) is employed to interpret MT data obtained in Pohang. The
1996) used in this study. To reduce numerical errors and im- algorithm minimizes an objective function given by
prove the convergence rate, we make all computations in double
2
precision. Φ = kWd ðJΔm + Gs −ΔdÞk ð1Þ
Through modeling, we calculate not only apparent resistivities and h i
2 k + 1 2
+ λ kRm k + α 2 kmk + 1 2 2
−mb k + β ksk ;
2
phases in Zxy and Zyx modes, ρxy, ρyx, ϕxy and ϕyx, but also induction
vector T. The induction vector is frequently used to interpret the sub-
surface since it indicates a relatively conductive region (Berdichevsky where the first norm on the right-hand side denotes a weighted data
and Dmitriev, 2002). It consists of the real parts of magnetic transfer misfit, the second and third norms model roughness, and the fourth

Fig. 4. Induction vectors from measured (a) and modeled data (b) at 0.001, 0.01, 0.1 and 1 Hz. In the measured data, some sites that have magnitudes larger than 1 are omitted.
536 N. Han et al. / Journal of Applied Geophysics 68 (2009) 533–545
Fig. 5. An inversion domain excluding sea blocks and a modeling domain including sea
blocks. Dotted lines represent the inversion domain.
Fig. 6. Lagrange multipliers and rms data misfits during inversion of Pohang MT data
including sea effects.
norm static-shift parameter. In the first norm, Wd is the weighting
matrix, J the sensitivity or Jacobian matrix, Δm the model correction
vector, Δd the vector of differences between observed and predicted
Fig. 7. Horizontal depth slices of reconstructed images obtained from inversion of Pohang MT data including sea effects. Pluses (+) represent measurement sites.
data, s the vector of static-shift parameters, and G the matrix which
relates s to corresponding receiver points (deGroot-Hedlin, 1991). In
the second and third norms, R is the second-order difference operator
quantifying model roughness, mk + 1 is the (k + 1)th model, mb can be
either a base model or the model of the previous iteration, and λ, α
and β are trade-off parameters. Static shifts are assumed to have a
Gaussian distribution (Ogawa and Uchida, 1996). An optimum value of
λ in solving Eq. (1) is searched to minimize root-mean-square (rms)
misfit R at each iteration (Sasaki, 2004).
The inversion iteration is continued until either a specific number
of iterations is met or a rms misfit measure reaches down to an
acceptable level. The rms data misfit is defined as
sffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
ΔdT WTd Wd Δd
R= ; ð2Þ
N
where N is the number of data. Components of Wd are defined as
reciprocals of standard deviations of observed data errors.
In 3D inversion based on the GN approach, the construction of a
sensitivity matrix requires huge computation time even though an
efficient adjoint-equation method based on the reciprocity principle
(McGillivray et al., 1994) is employed. To reduce the computation time,
we use a parallelized computation of sensitivities (Han et al., 2008).
5. 3D MT modeling including sea
Prior to inversion, we performed 3D MT modeling including the sea
located in the eastern part of Pohang to investigate sea effects (Fig. 1). A
model with an area of 70 km by 50 km including the survey area is
constructed for the modeling (Fig. 2). The model consists of five layers
and has sea on its right-hand side. Each layer is set up to have resistivities
of 5, 300, 50,1000, and d100 ohm-m (from top to bottom), and to extend
to depths of 0.4, 0.9, 1.5, 33, and 273 km, respectively, which are
determined based on both logging data and 1D inversion results. The
modeling domain is horizontally discretized with a uniform grid of 1 km.
The seafloor topography is expressed with 13 steps of depths, 10, 30, 60,
 N. Han et al. / Journal of Applied Geophysics 68 (2009) 533–545 pp. 537–540

Fig. 8. Comparisons of sounding curves between measured and calculated responses at 20 sites. Circles and diamonds represent measured responses while Solid and dotted lines calculated responses in the Zxy and Zyx modes, respectively. Vertical bars denote standard deviations of measured responses.
 N. Han et al. / Journal of Applied Geophysics 68 (2009) 533–545
100, 150, 200, 300, 400, 500, 700, 900, 1100, and 1300 m to describe the
steep variation of bathymetry of the East Sea (Fig. 2). We utilize ETOPO2
data given by National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC, http://www.
ngdc.noaa.gov) for the seafloor topography. However, the surface
topography is assumed to be flat and equal to the sea level since the
surface relief of the Pohang area varies smoothly. The x and y directions
point to the north and east, respectively.
Sounding curves of observed and modeled data are compared at
stations PHG-103 and PHG-116 (Fig. 3), which are the farthest and
nearest measuring sites to the sea, respectively, among the 44 stations
used in 3D inversion as shown in Fig. 2. In modeled data at station PHG-
103, a split in the sounding curves of apparent resistivity in the Zxy and
Zyx modes starts from 0.1 Hz, while 0.5 Hz in those of phase (Fig. 3a). At
station PHG-116, however, a split of sounding curves of phase starts from
1 Hz, a slightly higher frequency than that at station PHG-103 (Fig. 3b).
These splits are attributed to sea effects because the host is a 1D medium
which does not cause any split in sounding curves. Splits in measured
data start at higher frequencies than those in modeled data because the
real earth is not essentially 1D as in the test model under consideration.
Although modeled and measured MT responses show some differences
at low frequencies, where modeled apparent resistivities in Zyx mode
increase while measured ones show another variation, modeled
responses follow a general trend of measured responses. As a result,
the constructed model can be a good representative of Pohang including
the East Sea to investigate sea effects.
Induction vectors at four frequencies, 0.001, 0.01, 0.1, and 1 Hz, are
calculated (Fig. 4) since the sea effects are observed below about 1 Hz
in phases. At 0.001 Hz, all the induction vectors of calculated data
point to the east regardless their distances from the seashore, directly
to the East Sea, but they point northeastward at 0.01 Hz because the
depth of sea near Pohang increases more rapidly toward north than
south as shown in Fig. 2. Induction vectors of measured data, however,
point toward southeast at 0.001 Hz and 0.01 Hz to indicate existence
of a large conductive zone in the southern part of the survey area as
well. In general, the magnitude of induction vectors decreases with
increasing frequency and increasing distance from a measurement site
to the sea. However, modeled data in the southeast margin at 1 Hz
have larger values toward southeast, Youngil Bay.
Since the forward modeling demonstrates that the East Sea distorts
MT responses at frequencies below 1 Hz at all of the survey sites, it is
necessary to handle the sea effects in the interpretation of Pohang data.
6. 3D inversion of Pohang MT data
We perform 3D inversion of Pohang MT data from 44 stations at 13
frequencies, ranging from 0.0159 Hz to 66 Hz. A total of 2110 data are
used in inversion after excluding some data with large standard
deviations. The noise floor is assumed to be 1.5% for the MT
impedance. An initial model is assumed to be a homogeneous half-
space whose resistivity is the log-average value of observed apparent
resistivities, 14.65 ohm-m. Parameters α and β in Eq. (1) are set to be
0.2 and 1.0, respectively. To reconstruct the subsurface structure more
Fig. 9. Induction vectors for the reconstructed resistivity model at frequencies of 0.0159 (left), 0.127 (center), and 1.02 Hz (right). Induction vectors for the stations with large
standard deviations are not calculated.
541
accurately from MT data distorted by sea effects, exact sensitivities are
evaluated at every iteration.
Inversion blocks express the coastline in a stepwise way, and
simplify the seafloor topography into four steps of depths: 100, 220,
900, and 1500 m. Since the conductivity of sea water is known as
about 3 S/m, the conductivity of inversion blocks representing sea
must be fixed during inversion. We fix the conductivity by excluding
the sea blocks from an inversion domain (Fig. 5), which is divided into
4304 blocks with unknown resistivities. Blocks for the sub-seafloor,
which are close to the survey area, are considered as unknowns of the
inversion, since resistivities of those blocks would affect MT responses
in the survey area. Seawater is included in the modeling domain to
simulate sea effects on MT responses. A 66 × 55 × 33 grid is used for
the forward modeling domain which includes the inversion domain
and sea. The smallest cell size for forward modeling is 150 m ×150 m ×
100 m, and cell sizes are gradually increased outward.
6.1. Inversion including sea effects
The inversion incorporating sea effects decreases both R and λ with
final R of 1.87 after seven iterations (Fig. 6). Twelve depth slices of
reconstructed images are shown in Fig. 7. A thick surface layer with
resistivities less than 10 ohm-m extends to a depth of about 300 m in the
northern part, while about 500 m in the southern part. The interface
between the conductive and resistive regions from depths of 360 m to
700 m is inclined in the NE–SW direction, which is the major strike
direction of lineaments in this region. Below the conductive surface
layer, we observe a gradually increasing resistivity with depth and a
resistive body of about 300 ohm-m at the center of the survey area at
depths from 0.7 to 3 km. In general, the reconstructed model shows a
conductive–resistive–conductive stratum. MT responses calculated for
the reconstructed Pohang model are compared with measured
responses at 20 sites, which are chosen randomly among the 44 sites
(Fig. 8). They show good agreements at all sites. Induction vectors for the
reconstructed resistivity model are calculated at 0.0159, 0.127, and
1.02 Hz among the 13 frequencies used (Fig. 9). At 0.0159 and 0.127 Hz,
they point toward southeast because of both the East Sea and the
conductive southern part as shown in Fig. 7. However, calculated
induction arrows point to a slightly different direction and have smaller
amplitude than measured ones (Fig. 4a). Inversion utilizing magnetic
transfer functions with apparent resistivities and phases will improve
the accuracy of induction vectors for the reconstructed model.
6.2. Interpretation of static shifts
When interpreting field MT data, proper consideration of static
shifts is important because they affect apparent resistivities over a
whole range of frequencies and, as a result, distort inversion results. In
this study, static shifts are determined simultaneously with model
parameters at every iteration. A variable weighting to static shifts, λβ,
is used in Eq. (1) to obtain more reliable estimates on static shifts (Han
et al., 2008). To examine the effects of static shifts on Pohang data,
542 N. Han et al. / Journal of Applied Geophysics 68 (2009) 533–545

Fig. 10. Comparisons of rms data misfits in cases of considering and neglecting static shifts (a), and resulting static shifts in the Zxy and Zyx modes (b) when considering static shifts.

inversion results neglecting static shifts are compared against those
considering static shifts, described in the previous section. β in Eq. (1)
is set to be 0.0 when static shifts are not considered.
When static shifts are neglected, R is reduced to 2.67 after ten
iterations, which is much larger than R for the case considering static
shifts, 1.87 (Fig. 10a). Furthermore, small scale anomalies appear at the
shallower parts in the reconstructed images, and the recovered
resistivities at deeper parts are exaggerated (Fig. 11). On the contrary,
when static shifts are considered adequately, reconstructed resistivities
vary smoothly from shallow to deep parts (Fig. 7). The resulting static
shifts are mostly between −1.0 and 1.0 in logarithmic scale of apparent
resistivity in both Zxy and Zyx modes (Fig. 10b). Consequently, inversion
of the data obtained in Pohang must consider static shifts to yield a more
reasonable resistivity model with a small rms data misfit.
7. Comparison with logging data
In the survey area, there exist four boreholes where various well
logs including caliper, gamma ray, and resistivity have been acquired
(Hwang et al., 2007). Boreholes BH01 and BH02 are located in the
southern part of the survey area with a distance of 165 m while
boreholes BH03 and BH04 are separated by 130 m in the northern part
(Fig. 1). In this section, we analyze the reconstructed model from 3D
inversion (Fig. 7) by comparing them with logging data from the four
boreholes.
From core and cutting logs at boreholes BH01 and BH02, roughly
four layers appear from surface to a depth of 1.5 km (Fig. 12): (a) a
semi-consolidated mudstone (S-MS); (b) alternating appearance of
trachybasalt (TB) and lapilli tuff (LT) within a mudstone layer; (c)
intrusive rhyolite (RL); and (d) alternation of sandstone and mudstone
(SS&MS). Resistivities of the four layers are determined from resistivity
logs: S-MS has resistivities less than 10 ohm-m, TB and LT several tens
of ohm-m, RL several hundreds of ohm-m, and SS&MS less than
100 ohm-m (Fig. 12). Core and cutting logs at borehole BH03 show
similar strata to those obtained from boreholes BH01 and BH02, while
depths of layers are different each other. From core and cutting logs at
borehole BH04, however, RL is not found although the distance between
boreholes BH03 and BH04 is only 130 m. Resistivity profiles derived

Fig. 11. Horizontal depth slices of reconstructed images obtained from inversion of Pohang MT data disregarding static shifts while including sea effects. Pluses (+) represent
measurement sites.
 N. Han et al. / Journal of Applied Geophysics 68 (2009) 533–545 543

Fig. 12. A sketch of core and cutting logs and resistivity logs at four boreholes, BH01, BH02, BH03 and BH04, shown in Fig. 1 (data from Hwang et al. (2007)).

from 3D inversion are compared with long normal logs from boreholes the reconstructed model represents S-MS although the layer extends
BH02, BH03 and BH04 (Fig.13), to show generally reasonable agreements. to deeper depths than interpreted from the logging data. These
Reconstructed images from 3D inversion are very similar to those differences are partly attributed to the fact that the implementation of
confirmed by logging data (Fig. 14). First, a conductive surface layer in a minimum-structure inversion procedure using a sum-of-squares, or
544 N. Han et al. / Journal of Applied Geophysics 68 (2009) 533–545

Fig. 13. Comparisons of resistivity profiles derived from 3D inversion and long normal from boreholes BH02, BH03 and BH04.

l2, measure of model structure introduces a smeared image (Constable
et al., 1987; Farquharson, 2008). The layer appears to be thicker in the
south, near boreholes BH01 and BH02, and gets thinner to the north,
near boreholes BH03 and BH04, as marked with black solid lines in
Fig. 14. Below the conductive surface layer, the resistivity increases
gradually as expected from resistivity logs (Fig. 13). A green-colored
region underneath S-MS is supposed to be TB and LT.
RL appears in blue color at the center of the reconstructed images.
The blue-colored region has resistivities of about 200 ohm-m and
extends from depths of about 0.9 km to 3 km, which is deeper than
expected from the logging data due to the minimum-structure
inversion. In Fig. 14, a distribution of RL is limited in the center of
the survey area. That is, if a borehole is located out of the region
marked as RL, RL may not appear in logging data as in borehole BH04.
Considering the effect of l2 measure of model structure, we can
assume that a boundary between RL and SS&MS is passing through
between boreholes BH03 and BH04, even though both boreholes are
shown to penetrate RL in the reconstructed model.
8. Conclusions
To accurately interpret MT data obtained in Pohang, Korea, we
conducted 3D inversion including sea effects. Since the survey area is
located only about 9 km apart from the East Sea, it is necessary to
consider sea effects in 3D inversion to produce a reliable subsurface
structure from distorted data. To investigate sea effects on MT data

Fig. 14. Interpretation of the reconstructed resistivity model. Two vertical sections crossing boreholes BH01 and BH02, and boreholes BH03 and BH04, and three horizontal slices are
shown.
 N. Han et al. / Journal of Applied Geophysics 68 (2009) 533–545
obtained in Pohang, forward modeling has been performed for a five-
layered model incorporating a realistic coastline and seafloor
topography, where resistivities and depths of the five layers were
decided based on both well logging data and 1D inversion results.
Modeling results showed that MT data in Pohang are affected by sea
effects at frequencies below 1 Hz since sounding curves of different
modes show splits and induction vectors point toward east.
We conducted 3D inversion including sea effects by excluding sea
blocks from the inversion domain to fix the resistivity of sea water, while
including them in the modeling domain to generate model responses.
For more accurate inversion, static shifts were also considered as
unknown parameters. Furthermore, exact sensitivities were utilized at
every iteration while parallel computation was made to efficiently
evaluate exact sensitivities. As a result, we could obtain a reasonable
resistivity model from MT data obtained in Pohang with a small rms data
misfit. Resistivity profiles from the reconstructed resistivity model are
compared with resistivity logs from four boreholes, confirming that the
reconstructed model is a good representative in explaining major
geological features of the Pohang area. Consequently, the 3D inversion
including sea effects enables us to accurately interpret MT data obtained
in an area close to sea as in Pohang.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by Korea Research Foundation Grant
funded by the Korea Government (MOEHRD) (KRF-2006-311-D00985),
the Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs, Korea, and Brain
Korea 21 Project of the Ministry of Education. MT surveys in Pohang were
carried out under the support of Basic Research Project of Korea Institute
of Geoscience and Mineral Resources (KIGAM). All computations are
conducted on the ‘IBM system’ of supercomputing center in Korea
Institute of Science and Technology Information (KISTI). We are grateful
to Yutaka Sasaki for allowing us to use and modify his 3D MT inversion
code. Comments by anonymous reviewers improved this paper.
545
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