Incorporating geological dip information into geophysical inversions
Geological bodies are often linear structures that have well‐defined strike direction and dip angle. We develop a new model objective function that allows this important information to be incorporated into geophysical inversions. A rotation matrix is applied to the horizontal and vertical derivatives of the model so that the derivative in an arbitrary direction is obtained. A model objective function that measures the flatness with respect to the rotated derivatives favors models that have elongated features with the specified strike and dip angle. Formulations for both 2-D and 3-D cases are presented, and they are illustrated using examples from dc resistivity and induced polarization (IP) problems. Synthetic and field examples show that an inversion carried out using known dip information produces a model that has higher resolution and provides a better representation of the true structure.