Fractal characterization of the South Australian gravity station network

SUMMARY The spatial distribution of the South Australian gravity station network (over 65 000 stations) can be approximated by a fractal point set of correlation dimension Dc= 1.4. The fractality is established over more than 2 decades of distance. The fractal nature of the grid is possibly due to the multistage decisions involved in establishing a network; in each step, previously unexplored areas are dissected by geophysical traverses, as in the classical fractal fragmentation process. It is shown that we cannot observe the short-wavelength components of the gravity field if the dimension of the network is less than two and any attempt to interpolate onto a regular grid could lead to spurious anomalies due to aliasing.

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