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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Earth Sci.
Sec. Geomagnetism and Paleomagnetism
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/feart.2025.1527004
This article is part of the Research Topic Advances in Magnetotelluric Imaging View all 8 articles

Reevaluating the Necessity of Static Shift Correction in Magnetotelluric Inversion

Provisionally accepted
Jingzhong Zeng Jingzhong Zeng 1Xiaobin Chen Xiaobin Chen 1*Peijie Wang Peijie Wang 2Zhongyin Liu Zhongyin Liu 1Juntao Cai Juntao Cai 1
  • 1 National Institute of Natural Hazards, Ministry of Emergency Management (China), Beijing, China
  • 2 Department of Earth and Space Sciences, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China

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

    Magnetotellurics (MT) is a significant electromagnetic exploration method. However, due to uneven distribution of surface charges and other factors, static shift often affects observed data, reducing the accuracy of inversion and interpretation. Correcting static shift through data processing remains a challenging task. Based on the characteristic that static shift affects only apparent resistivity data without impacting phase data, this paper proposes an inversion strategy that avoids static shift correction. At sites affected by static shift, apparent resistivity data are excluded, and only phase data are used in the inversion. Synthetic and field data tests indicate that the reduced inclusion of apparent resistivity data has minimal impact on inversion results, and due to the exclusion of data influenced by static shift, the inversion accurately reflects deep anomalous structures. This demonstrates that by excluding apparent resistivity data and relying solely on phase data at static-shifted sites, accurate inversion results can be achieved without additional static shift correction.

    Keywords: Magnetotellurics, inversion, Apparent resistivity, Impedance phase, static shift magnetotellurics, static shift

    Received: 12 Nov 2024; Accepted: 13 Jan 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Zeng, Chen, Wang, Liu and Cai. 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: Xiaobin Chen, National Institute of Natural Hazards, Ministry of Emergency Management (China), Beijing, China

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