Extracting Reliable Geological Information from Electromagnetic Datasets in a Regolith Dominated Terrain: Capricorn Orogen, Western Australia

The sedimentary basins of the Capricorn Orogen, WA are prospective for base-metal mineralisation, however, the discovery of new mineral occurences has been hampered by the orogen's thick regolith. This thesis presents interpretations of the potentially prospective Capricorn Orogen basins from AEM and MT data. It was shown that AEM surveys can detect conductive ore zones 440m below the surface, but accurate AEM inversions are limited to resolving layered geology, and deep conductors located at 100m below regolith. MT methods improve on AEM results and recover the depth to top and geometry of conductive basin units to 2km-4km below the surface.