Carpathian Journal of Earth and Environmental Sciences

The present work deals with the detection of linear features in aeromagnetic anomalies of Wadi Haimur area, South Eastern Desert (SED), Egypt, according to the directional horizontal gradient (DHG) technique. DHG is an effective tool to improve the linear features in potential data. Given the elevation and azimuth of the anomaly, it calculates sharp lateral variations in densities. Straight features perpendicular on the horizontal azimuth are enhanced, while the parallel ones become limited. It is a standard enhancement technique applied in the interpretation of geophysical data. The DHG algorithm is applied in a different azimuth from an original zero reference line (x-direction). This technique enhances linear features giving more details in the data than those interpreted from other filters. The study of the aeromagnetic anomaly of Wadi Haimur area displays five notable faults trending to NW, NE, N-S, NNW, and NNE directions. This paper introduces a horizontal gradient analysis that does not require the calculation of the vertical derivative of the field and thus is faster and has extensive application for enhancing the linear features of potential field data.