Geophysical imaging of subsurface properties and magnetostratigraphy of sedimentary records

The Roter Kamm Crater is a 3.7-million-year-old meteoritic impact crater in the Sperrgebiet National Park in southern Namibia. The Sperrgebiet National Park, officially Tsau ǁKhaeb (Sperrgebiet) National Park, is a national park and former diamond mining area in southern Namibia. Since 1908 the public has had no access to the area and even when it was proclaimed a national park in 2008 most of the restrictions remained, leaving the environment mainly undisturbed and unexplored.
The geophysical exploration of the Roter Kamm Crater can bring valuable information about its internal structure, as only a very limited number of geophysical studies had been carried out at this site. Prior gravimetry and (airborne-)magnetic measurements indicate a bowl-shaped anomaly underneath the crater with an estimated maximum sedimentary thickness of 400 m or higher.
To be able to image the the crater infill appropriatly, two electromagnetic methods were applied: the Transient Electromagnetic (TEM) and the Audiomagnetotelluric (AMT) method. The AMT data set was planned as a complementary data set to the more extensive TEM data set to ensure the imaging of the lower boundary of the sedimentary infill.
This data publication (10.5880/GIPP-MT.202127.1) encompasses a detailed report in pdf format with a description of the project, information on the experimental setup, data collection, instrumentation used, recording configuration and data quality. The folder structure and content of the data repository are described in detail in Ritter et al. (2019). Time-series data are provided in EMERALD format (Ritter et al., 2015).

The Geophysical Instrument Pool Potsdam (GIPP) provides field instruments for (temporary) seismological studies (both controlled source and earthquake seismology) and for magnetotelluric (electromagnetic) experiments. The GIPP is operated by the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences. The instrument facility is open for academic use. Instrument applications are evaluated and ranked by an external steering board. See Haberland and Ritter (2016) and https://www.gfz.de/gipp for more information.