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Concept
Bouguer anomaly
Summary
In geodesy and geophysics, the Bouguer anomaly (named after Pierre Bouguer) is a gravity anomaly, corrected for the height at which it is measured and the attraction of terrain. The height correction alone gives a free-air gravity anomaly.
The Bouguer anomaly defined as:
Here,
is the free-air gravity anomaly.
is the Bouguer correction which allows for the gravitational attraction of rocks between the measurement point and sea level;
is a terrain correction which allows for deviations of the surface from an infinite horizontal plane
The free-air anomaly , in its turn, is related to the observed gravity as follows:
where:
is the correction for latitude (because the Earth is not a perfect sphere; see normal gravity);
is the free-air correction.
A Bouguer reduction is called simple (or incomplete) if the terrain is approximated by an infinite flat plate called the Bouguer plate. A refined (or complete) Bouguer reduction removes the effects of terrain more precisely. The difference between the two is called the (residual) terrain effect (or (residual) terrain correction) and is due to the differential gravitational effect of the unevenness of the terrain; it is always negative.
The gravitational acceleration outside a Bouguer plate is perpendicular to the plate and towards it, with magnitude 2πG times the mass per unit area, where is the gravitational constant. It is independent of the distance to the plate (as can be proven most simply with Gauss's law for gravity, but can also be proven directly with Newton's law of gravity). The value of is 6.67e-11N m2 kg−2, so is 4.191e-10N m2 kg−2 times the mass per unit area. Using 1Gal = 0.01m s−2 (1cm s−2) we get 4.191e-5mGal m2 kg−1 times the mass per unit area. For mean rock density (2.67g cm−3) this gives 0.1119mGal m−1.
The Bouguer reduction for a Bouguer plate of thickness is
where is the density of the material and is the constant of gravitation. On Earth the effect on gravity of elevation is 0.3086 mGal m−1 decrease when going up, minus the gravity of the Bouguer plate, giving the Bouguer gradient of 0.
Official source
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