interpretation of gravity anomalies via terracing method of the profile curvature

one of the main goals of interpretation of gravity data is to detect location and edges of the anomalies. edge detection of gravity anomalies is carried out by different methods. terracing of the data is one of the approaches that help the interpreter to achieve appropriate results of edge detection. this goal becomes a complex task when the gravity anomalies have smooth borders due to gradual change of density contrast. in this article terracing of data has been inspected using the profile curvature method. the synthetic data are used to assess the accuracy and efficiency of the method in edge detection of gravity anomalies. the results of this research have been compared with the results of other methods such as first vertical derivation, analytic signal, tilt angle, horizontal gradient of tilt angle, and laplacian second derivative. two real data set are also used to show the applicability of the method.