Application of the RTM-technique to gravity reduction for tracking near-surface mass-density anomalies: A case study of salt diapirs in Iran

We study a land-based gravity reduction technique for tracking near surface massdensity anomalies. For this purpose, we apply the residual terrain modeling (RTM) technique accompanied by a global geopotential model to provide a high-frequency reference gravity field. The proposed reference gravity field includes all required corrections for the corresponding gravity reduction; hence, it is subtracted from landbased gravity data to provide a kind of gravity anomaly that depends mainly on the massdensity anomalies of the near surface geological targets. As a case study, we examine the proposed reduction method to detect horizontal locations of some of known salt diapirs within the Zagros region. The numerical results indicate that the reduced gravity anomalies are sufficiently sensitive to locations of the salt diapirs.