Yang Su

• Ph.D of Geophysics
• Jilin University

When using electrical prospecting methods to monitor the front edge of waterflooding in the residual oil development, the electromagnetic responses generated by the high conductivity of the steel casing in the observation area usually obscure the electrical abnormal signal of the formation caused by waterflooding, largely affecting the imaging accu...

Bauxite plays a crucial role in metallic and non-metallic industry. The surface-exposed salento-type bauxite deposits have been largely exploited and developed. With the increasing demand of these resources, it is important but very challenging to explore the potential bauxite deposits in the deep earth. In this paper, based on new developments in...

As the structure of the underground space becomes increasingly complex, traditional two-dimensional seismoelectric methods are no longer adequate for the comprehensive exploration. To achieve precise imaging of the underground space, it is in urgent need to develop three-dimensional full-waveform modeling techniques. In this paper, we propose a thr...

Airborne electromagnetic (AEM) technology is an efficient geophysical exploration tool for investigating subsurface electrical structures. In recent years, 3D inversion of AEM data is being developed rapidly, but it still faces challenges such as low resolution and computational efficiency. To solve these problems, we propose a multiscale shearlet-...

Satellite magnetic data contain significant information about the Earth’s interior electrical structure. However, the altitudes of satellites vary over time and latitude. Theoretically, the signals from the external magnetosphere and ionosphere, along with the induced magnetic field from the Earth, exhibit considerable variation at different altitu...

Previous works have demonstrated that inverting MT data jointly with gravity data can synergize the high lateral resolution of gravity and the vertical resolution of MT. However, the existing joint stabilizers usually work for structured grids instead of unstructured ones that are more powerful for characterizing complex geology. Here, we utilize L...

Slow forward modeling is the main factor that restricts the practical use of three-dimensional (3D) inversion and interpretation of airborne electromagnetic (AEM) data. To improve the modeling efficiency in 3D AEM, we propose a new multiscale finite-element (MsFE) method based on unstructured hexahedral meshes. Compared with the traditional 3D AEM...

At present, the mainstream technology for leachate detection in landfills is electrical resistivity tomography (ERT), known for its efficiency and non-destructive nature. However, the conventional ERT data interpretation primarily uses inversion based on structured grids, which cannot accurately simulate the complex and thin impermeable layers of l...

We develop a new spectral-element method (SEM) by incorporating a domain-decomposition technique, referred to as the dual-primal spectral-element tearing and interconnecting method (SETI-DP), for high-precision forward simulation of three-dimensional (3D) DC resistivity method. To handle the terrain and complex underground structures, we use unstru...

In mineral, environmental, and engineering explorations, we frequently encounter geological bodies with varied sizes, depths, and conductivity contrasts with surround rocks and try to interpret them with single survey data. The conventional three-dimensional (3-D) inversions significantly rely on the size of the grids, which should be smaller than...

Many mineral deposits demonstrate low-resistivity characteristics. This property makes the electromagnetic (EM) method a very useful tool for mineral exploration. In the past decades, the application of EM exploration technologies has been reviewed in many case studies. However, most reviews focused on EM exploration methods, the development of equ...

The conventional geo-electromagnetic data inversions are mostly based on the gradient optimization methods. However, this type of methods can only provide single “optimal” inverse model under specific prior conditions, which cannot effectively evaluate the reliability and uncertainty of the inversion results. The widely used uncertainty quantificat...

Marine controlled-source electromagnetic (MCSEM) inversion plays a crucial role in hydrocarbon exploration and pre-drill reservoir evaluation. Deep learning techniques have been widely used in geophysical inversions. Although they work on theoretical data well, their performance on survey data needs to be improved. Since no constraint of physical l...

We propose a novel method for 3-D magnetotelluric (MT) forward modelling based on hybrid meshless and finite-element (FE) methods. This method divides the earth model into a central computational region and an expansion one. For the central region, we adopt scatter points to discretize the model, which can flexibly and accurately characterize the c...

The airborne electromagnetic (AEM) method can be used to effectively explore underground conductivity structures at high resolution. Conventional three-dimensional (3D) AEM inversions are mainly based on gradient-type deterministic methods; however, their results cannot be evaluated without bias because they only provide an updated model from an in...

Airborne electromagnetic (AEM) surveys usually covers a large area and create a large amount of data. This has limited the application of three-dimensional (3D) AEM inversions. To make 3D AEM data inversion at a large scale possible, the local mesh method has been proposed to avoid solving large matrix equations in 3D AEM modeling. However, the loc...

The choice of data misfit measure has a great impact on the convergence of electromagnetic (EM) inversion. The conventional measure based on the $l_{2}$ -norm tends to excessively amplify the weights of a larger misfit, inadvertently neglecting data with a smaller misfit during the inversion process, thereby diminishing the resolution to a certai...

A time-domain finite-element method based on an arbitrary quadrilateral mesh is pro-posed to simulate two dimensional seismoelectric and electroseismic waves in SHTEmode. By decoupling the electrokinetic coupling equation, we can solve seismic wavesand electromagnetic waves independently. For the simulation of seismic wavefield, weutilize a more co...

Graphite is considered to be one of Europe’s most critical minerals. It is necessary for the transition from hydrocarbon fuel to electricity due to its use in batteries that power electronic devices and electric transport. In the past, high-quality exposed graphite was found in Norway without today’s advanced geophysical and geological methods. Nor...

In fractal, porous, and cranny rough media, the diffusion of the electromagnetic (EM) field differs from that in piecewise smooth media. This phenomenon is known as an anomalous diffusion. To study the influence of anomalous diffusion on EM signals, we use the fractional time derivative and derive a governing equation describing the subdiffusion pr...

The finite-element (FE) method for three-dimensional (3D) airborne electromagnetic (AEM) modeling can flexibly simulate complex geological structures at high accuracy. However, it has low efficiency and high computational requirements. To solve these problems, one needs to generate meshes more reasonably. In view of this, we develop an adaptive oct...

We propose a novel smoothing regularization scheme for three-dimensional (3D) magnetotelluric (MT) inversion based on unstructured tetrahedral discretization. Different from conventional methods that explicitly add smoothing constraints to model parameters, we choose to do the gradient filtering to smooth the model updates in an implicit way. By tr...

The flight altitude has a large effect on the airborne electromagnetic (AEM) responses. Due to the dynamic environment of the aircraft, the recorded sensor altitudes may contain errors. Research demonstrates that the AEM responses caused by a several meters altitude errors can be larger than caused by some anomalous body. Ignoring these errors will...

The surface-to-borehole transient electromagnetic (SBTEM) method can provide images at higher resolution for deep earth because its receivers are close to targets. However, as usually the boreholes distribute sparsely, the limited EM data can result in an “equivalent trap” in SBTEM inversions, i.e., the data are well-fitted, but the model is not pr...

Airborne electromagnetic (AEM) exploration produces large amounts of data due to its high sampling rate, so that the three-dimensional (3D) inversions take extremely big computation and time consumption. We present a fast 3D inversion framework for large-scale AEM explorations using a preconditioned stochastic gradient descent combined with Gauss-N...

For the mineral exploration in complex terrain areas, the semi-airborne transient electromagnetic (SATEM) technology is one of the most powerful methods due to its high efficiency and low cost. However, since the mainstream SATEM systems only observe the component dBz/dt and the data are usually processed by simple interpretation or one-dimensional...

The traditional three-dimensional (3D) magnetotelluric (MT) forward modeling using Krylov subspace algorithms has the problem of low modeling efficiency. To improve the computational efficiency of 3D MT forward modeling, we present a novel geometric multigrid algorithm for the finite element method. We use the vector finite element to discretize Ma...

As an efficient geophysical exploration tool, the airborne electromagnetic (AEM) method has been widely used in mineral exploration, geological mapping, environmental and engineering investigation, etc. Currently, the imaging and 1D inversions are the mainstream means for AEM interpretation as the amount of AEM data is huge and 2D and 3D inversions...

The conventional magnetotelluric (MT) data inversion methods, such as the nonlinear conjugate gradient method, quasi-Newton method, and Gauss-Newton method and so on, can converge robustly, but their results are easily affected by the initial model and regularization term. Although supervised learning can break through the resolution limitation by...

In a heterogeneous medium (usually called a rough medium) with fractured formations, the propagation of an electromagnetic (EM) field is a type of subdiffusion. Current mainstream geophysical EM data processing methods cannot be applied to data acquired on heterogeneous earth, as they are not governed by the classic diffusion theory. To evaluate th...

As an efficient geophysical exploration method, the time-domain airborne electromagnetic (AEM) data often show sign reversal in late-time channels due to induced polarization (IP) effect. The traditional imaging and inversion methods without considering the IP effect cannot recover the true electrical structure of the earth, so it is necessary to d...

Gravity inversion is a typical geophysical inversion method that obtains the underground density distribution by analyzing the gravity anomaly. Normally, it can be divided into geophysics-based and deep learning based inversion. The 3D geophysics-based inversion is a time- and memory-consuming method, so 3D inversion is not routinely implemented in...

We propose a new three‐dimensional anisotropic inversion scheme for magnetotelluric (MT) data. In this method, the earth is discretized into unstructured tetrahedral grids that can fit complex structures well, such as the earth topography and coastline. We use a 3 × 3 tensor to describe the anisotropic conductivity in the governing equation for MT...

The manuscript was processed without taking into account the authors’ modifications based on the last comments of reviewers, mainly in-text citations. These have now been added to the original article.

Three-dimensional (3D) airborne electromagnetic (AEM) inversions have been restricted by the modeling efficiency resulted from the complex geology in exploration areas and massive amount of data collected by AEM systems. In order to improve the modeling efficiency, we develop an algorithm that combines the hexahedral vector finite-element (FE) with...

Based on the spatial structure correlation in different geophysical parameters, we propose a new three-dimensional (3D) joint inversion method for frequency-domain airborne electromagnetic (AEM) and airborne magnetic (AirMag) data by incorporating a local Pearson correlation constraint (LPCC). For each iteration, the entire model is separated into...

We propose a new tool to invert magnetotelluric data for 1D model based on deep Q-networks (DQN), which works as a stochastic optimization method. By transforming the inversion problem into a Markov decision process, the tool learns by trial and error to find the optimal path for updating the model to fit the observed data. The DQN method converges...

Spontaneous coal combustion is a serious hazard that affects mining safety. Since the coal seams are thin and their resistivity dramatically changes during spontaneous combustion, locating the burned cavities or caving zones using electromagnetic (EM) methods is challenging. The conventional transient electromagnetic (TEM) method with a loop transm...

The high sampling rate of airborne electromagnetic (AEM) systems can create huge data volumes, causing major challenges for three-dimensional (3D) electromagnetic modeling and inversions and constraining the practical applicability of AEM. Rapid and accurate forward modeling is the key to efficient 3D inversion. Here a new strategy for improving th...

The conventional, L2-norm-based, regularization term in electromagnetic (EM) inversions implements smooth constraints on model complexity in the space domain, which can smoothen the boundaries of complex underground structures. To improve the resolution of 3-D frequency-domain airborne EM (AEM) inversions, we propose a new algorithm for sparse-regu...

The conventional trans-dimensional Bayesian inversion uses Monte Carlo method to search the model space for a solution that satisfies both the acceptance probability and data fitting. With this method one can get the inverse model based on the maximum probability and determine the model uncertainty. However, because the search space is too big, the...

In this study, we propose a three-dimensional (3D) forward modeling algorithm of surface-to-borehole transient electromagnetic (SBTEM) fields based on an unstructured vector finite-element method to analyze the characteristics of SBTEM responses for complex geoelectrical models. To solve the double-curl diffusion equation for the electric field, we...

Rocks and ores in nature usually appear macro-anisotropic, especially in sedimentary areas with strong layering. This anisotropy will lead to false interpretation of electromagnetic (EM) data when inverted under the assumption of an isotropic earth. However, the time-domain (TD) airborne EM (AEM) inversion for an anisotropic model has not attracted...

Airborne electromagnetic (AEM) method uses aircraft as a carrier to tow EM instruments for geophysical survey. Because of its huge amount of data, the traditional AEM data inversions take one-dimensional (1D) models. However, the underground earth is very complicated, the inversions based on 1D models can frequently deliver wrong results, so that t...

Due to the huge amount of data generated by time-domain airborne EM (AEM) systems, conductivity depth imaging methods are widely used to help in the interpretation of this data as they can be generated quickly and easily. We present a new imaging method generated using a deep neural network (DNN). The network structure combines four convolutional n...

Time-domain airborne electromagnetic (AEM) data are frequently subject to interference from various types of noise, which can reduce the data quality and affect data inversion and interpretation. Traditional denoising methods primarily deal with data directly, without analyzing the data in detail; thus, the results are not always satisfactory. In t...

In this paper, we propose a new method for two-dimensional (2-D) magnetotelluric (MT) inversion based on the curvelet transform. Unlike the conventional inversion methods that apply constraints on the model in the space-domain, the method presented in this paper is based on the sparse constraint by the curvelet transform, and we directly invert the...

Since Airborne Electromagnetic (AEM) survey produces massive data, an effective imaging and inversion tool is very important. In this work, we take a layered earth model as an example to derive the one-dimensional (1D) time-domain AEM inversion under generalized model constraints. Starting from the objective functional for the regularized inversion...