Appraisal of geodynamic inversion results: a data mining approach

Abstract

Abstract Bayesian sampling based inversions require many thousands or even millions of forward models, depending on how nonlinear or non-unique the inverse problem is, and how many unknowns are involved. The result of such a probabilistic inversion is not a single ‘best-fit’ model, but rather a probability distribution that is represented by the entire model ensemble. Often, a geophysical inverse problem is non-unique, and the corresponding posterior distribution is multimodal, meaning that the distribution consists of clusters with similar models that represent the observations equally well. In these cases, we would like to visualize the characteristic model properties within each of these clusters of models. However, even for a moderate number of inversion parameters, a manual appraisal for a large number of models is not feasible. This poses the question whether it is possible to extract end-member models that represent each of the best-fit regions including their uncertainties. Here, I show how a machine learning tool can be used to characterize end-member models, including their uncertainties, from a complete model ensemble that represents a posterior probability distribution. The model ensemble used here results from a nonlinear geodynamic inverse problem, where rheological properties of the lithosphere are constrained from multiple geophysical observations. It is demonstrated that by taking vertical cross-sections through the effective viscosity structure of each of the models, the entire model ensemble can be classified into four end-member model categories that have a similar effective viscosity structure. These classification results are helpful to explore the non-uniqueness of the inverse problem and can be used to compute representative data fits for each of the end-member models. Conversely, these insights also reveal how new observational constraints could reduce the non-uniqueness. The method is not limited to geodynamic applications and a generalized MATLAB code is provided to perform the appraisal analysis.