The University of British Columbia

Course Description

UBC Calendar

For a full listing of course offerings please see the UBC calendar description

Learning Goals

Provide students with an opportunity to apply state-of-the-art inversion, interpretation strategies and software to mineral exploration problems. An exploration challenge is identified and the class is provided with geophysical data from various surveys as well as additional information concerning the geologic model and available well logs. The goal is to interpret these data in a mutually consistent manner and thereby contribute to the solution of the exploration challenge

 

See course file for more information

Instructors

D. Oldenburg - http://www.eos.ubc.ca/about/faculty/D.Oldenburg.html

Textbook

Course Content

For 2010 the task will be to use geophysics to contribute to the problem of finding uranium in the Athabaska basin. The geophysical surveys include: gravity, magnetic, DC resistivity, Induced Polarization, airborne and ground electromagnetic data.  The theoretical basis for each survey is reviewed as well as important aspects about acquisition and processing. Students will invert the data, interact about practical issues that arise, and combine results into a final interpretation.

Geophysical Data Sets:

• Airborne gravity (for regional interpretation)
• Airborne magnetics (for regional interpretation)
• DC resistivity (pole-pole)
• IP (Induced Polarization)
• Geotem (airborne time domain EM data)
• Ground loop TEM data

Lecture Topics

• Week 1: Background information, geologic model, exploration problem, setting realistic goals, course organization. Presentation by senior geologist from Cameco.

• Week 2,3: Assembling/understanding data sets; plotting data, preparing for inversion.

• Week 4,5: Inversion of regional data: airborne gravity and magnetics

• Week 6,7: Inversion of DC resistivity and IP

• Week 8,9: Inversion of Geotem and Ground loop TEM data

• Week 10, 11: Revisiting the inversion and interpretation; integrating with petrophysical logs and known geology

• Week 12: Joint interpretation, presentations, case history document

Labs

 

Other:

Who would take this course? This course will be valuable for students who will be involved in using geophysical survey data for industry problems or for geoscience research.

Background needed: Solid math and physics background. A familiarity with geophysical surveys and applied geophysics at an undergraduate level is desirable but not mandatory.