Determination of the maximum depth of potential fields sources by DEXP method

An efficient way to deal with the inherent ambiguity in potential fields interpretation is to determine some model parameters common to classes of models fitting the data. One of these approaches is to determine the maximum depth to sources, for example by the well known Bott-Smith rules. These rules involve only the maximum of the field and of its horizontal gradient and are independent from the density contrast. Thanks to the direct relationship between structural index and depth to sources we work out a simple and fast strategy to obtain the same results by using the DEXP method. It consists in varying the structural index, related to the scaling exponent of the DEXP transformation, and selecting as the maximum depth the one obtained for the highest allowable value of the structural index. We tested our approach on synthetic models against the results obtained by the classical Bott-Smith formulas and the results are in fact very similar, confirming the validity of this method. The same approach could be valid also for other semi-automated methods, such as Euler deconvolution, demonstrating that this class of methods have potentialities still not fully exploited.