Inferring the subsurface basement depth and the structural trends as deduced from aeromagnetic data at West Beni Suef area, Western Desert, Egypt

AbstractThe present work aimed to delineate the subsurface structures and to estimate the magnetic source depth at the selected area lying in West Beni Suef area, Western Desert, Egypt, following different geomagnetic techniques. The analysis of aeromagnetic data demonstrates five significant tectonic faults trending to NW-SE, ENE-WSW, NE-SW, E-W and NNW-SSE directions constructed using Euler deconvolution techniques. The execution of this study is initiated by transformation of the total intensity aeromagnetic data to the reduced to pole (RTP) magnetic intensity. This is followed by applying several transformation techniques and various filtering processes through qualitative and quantitative analyses on magnetic data. The reduced to the northern magnetic pole (RTP) data are separated spectrally into regional and residual magnetic components using the computed power spectrum of the magnetic data. The estimated mean depths of both regional and residual sources are found to be 5.27km and 2.78km respectively. Also, depth estimations have been conducted by application of the Euler deconvolution and 2-D modeling techniques. The results indicate that the eastern and northern parts of the study area discriminate deeper basement relief and the depth of basement surface reaches to 5095m. While the southern and western parts of the study area discriminate shallower basement relief and the depth of basement surface reaches to 227m. This study has given a clear picture of the geologic structures beneath the study area