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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Earth Sci.
Sec. Solid Earth Geophysics
Volume 12 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/feart.2024.1447362

Imaging the Mahout structure at the Oman desert with the aid of computational applied geophysicsal observations

Provisionally accepted
Sobhi J. Nasir Sobhi J. Nasir 1Nikos Economou Nikos Economou 1,2*Khalil Al Hooti Khalil Al Hooti 1Talal Al-Hosni Talal Al-Hosni 1
  • 1 College of Science, Sultan Qaboos University, Al Khoud, Muscat, Oman
  • 2 Technical University of Crete, Chania, Greece

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Geophysical methods may provide crucial information for the characterization of buried impact structures. In this study we report and comment on the results of the geophysical survey of an elliptically shaped structure near Mahout at Oman's central desert. Geophysical models describe the physical properties variation of this structure's subsurface in terms of density, magnetic susceptibility and electrical resistivity of the formations buried under the desert sand. For the two former physical properties a 3D inversion scheme was utilized, while for the latter the Very Low Frequency Electromagnetic (VLF-EM) method and 2D inversion was were involved for the first time in a similar study. The resultant models are in good agreement in for imaging a generally bowl-shaped structure buried under the desert sand with a low resistivity (<40 Ohmm), highly magnetic (magnetic susceptibility 0.03 SI to 0.08 SI) and mixed density center (2.2 g/cm 3 to 3.2 g/cm 3 ). The results of the integrated geophysical survey at Mahout enhances the information about the applicability of the specific geophysical techniques at structures buried by sandy formations with less than 1km diameter, which today mostly comes from large scale impact craters (> 100km) and confirms that such a multi-geophysical approach can be successful for imaging similar structures.

    Keywords: Impact crater, Applied geophysics, gravity, Magnetics, VLFVLF-EM, 3D inversion Justified, Space Before: 6 pt, After: 12 pt

    Received: 11 Jun 2024; Accepted: 04 Nov 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Nasir, Economou, Al Hooti and Al-Hosni. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Nikos Economou, Technical University of Crete, Chania, Greece

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