Application of 2D inversion of magnetotelluric data bearing terrain information based on an unstructured mesh

This paper focuses on the application of the 2D inversion of magnetotelluric data that bear terrain information based on an unstructured adaptive triangular mesh. An adaptive unstructured triangular grid can be used to accurately simulate undulating terrain and complex geological structures. The adaptive unstructured triangular grids for magnetotelluric forward modeling are automatically refined using the a posteriori error estimation with the finite element solution, which ensures the accuracy of the model response. As for adaptive unstructured triangular grids for magnetotelluric inversion, fine mesh generation is adopted for the inversion target areas, while coarse grid generation is utilized for the boundary areas of the model, thus reducing unnecessary inversion parameters on the premise of satisfying the inversion accuracy. According to the inversion of an undulating-terrain model of land and an undulating-seabed model, the accuracy and applicability of the algorithm are verified and the algorithm can be used to image the multi-scale structures under the undulating terrain of land and seabed. Then, the method was applied to the inversion of the measured data of the Houshan area in Karamay. As a result, the resistivity structure obtained through the inversion was consistent with the geological data and the results obtained through the nonlinear conjugate gradient inversion.