GRAVITY

SURVEY in
MOVING
PLATFORM
Cholisina Anik Perwita
SEA SURVEY
Measurement of gravity at sea was first done by lowering the
operator and the instrument in a diving bell slow and
expensive
Now the two method are used :
Lowering the meter onto the sea floor (~ 0.1 mGal accuracy)
The meter is operated by remote control
Gulf and LaCoste-Romberg gravimeters are adapted for this
Errors arise due to wave motion at the surface, which decrease with depth
It is better if the instrument is placed on rock and not mud
The meter onboard ship (recently improved from ~ 2 mGal to 0.2
accuracy)
This is fundamentally difficult because the ship experiences accelerations up
to 10% of g (100,000 mGal)
The accuracy achieved depends on the state of the sea
AIR SURVEYS
(accuracies ~ 1-5 mgal)
Airborne gravity surveying has the potential to greatly reduce
the expense of gravity surveys but how usable the results are is
controversial.
Some workers have checked airborne results with land results
and report discrepancies much larger than the official errors,
which suggests that the true accuracy of these surveys is
worse than the calculated precision, a common situation in
science.
Space Measurement
Determining the gravity field of
the Earth from space involves
measuring the height of a satellite
above sea level by radar altimetry.
SEASAT until recently had given
the most and best data. It was
launched in 1978, into a circular
orbit with an altitude of 800 km.
It circled the Earth 14 times each
day and covered 95% of the
Earths surface every 36 hours.
 SURVEY RESOLUTION
Resolution is the ability to separate two features
that are very close together.
For gravity, this can be expressed in terms of the
accuracy of the measuring system (in mGal) at the
shortest resolvable signal wavelength (km).
The resolution for shipborne and airborne surveys
(dynamic surveys) is influenced by a range of
noise components induced by uncertainty and
variability of speed, position, sea state, and air
turbulence.
Resolution of marine gravity surveys degrades significantly with worsening sea
state. In airborne surveys, flying straight and level with no turbulence ideal
conditions) is generally not achieved. On the other hand, recent improvements in
airborne gravity resolution have revealed the inadequacy of the ground static
measurements used to quantify this resolution.