Heat flow and gravity responses over salt bodies: A comparative model analysis

Abstract

Two‐dimensional numerical modeling of sea‐floor heat flow and water‐bottom gravity responses to systematic variations in simple subsurface salt body geometries provides insight on the relative usefulness of these two data types for extracting salt geometry information. For a given salt body geometry, diffusion of heat through overlying sediments results in a dramatic decrease in the amplitude of heat flow anomalies as the depth to the top of the salt body increases. For top‐of‐salt depths greater than about 1 km, the heat flow response is insensitive to the length of salt feeder stocks and to the thickness of salt tongues/sheets. This shallow depth‐to‐top‐of‐salt sensitivity range, in addition to a number of environmental factors that can adversely affect interpretation of heat flow anomalies in terms of heat refraction towards and through salt bodies, severely limits the usefulness of sea‐floor heat flow data for constraining aspects of salt body geometry. For gravity data, the critical factor for addressing salt body geometry is the distribution of salt relative to the sediment‐salt density crossover depth (above and below which salt is more and less dense, respectively, than the surrounding sediment). Except when the relevant geometry information being sought (presence and/or length of feeder stock, thickness of salt tongue or sheet) is near the density crossover depth, the geometry‐related information content of the gravity field is greater than that of the heat flow field. Based on these model results, measurement uncertainty considerations, and data limitations, we conclude that gravity data generally offer an order of magnitude greater resolution capability than sea‐floor heat flow data for addressing salt body geometry issues of exploration interest.