An application for removing cultural noise from aeromagnetic data

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A high‐resolution aeromagnetic survey collected over the North Slope of Alaska by World Geoscience was acquired in response to a need for highly detailed data in an area where traditional geophysical techniques are expensive and prohibitive (McConnell, 1995) (Figure 1). These data were recently released to the University of Texas’ Institute for Geophysics and provide a unique opportunity to investigate the problem of cultural noise suppression in aeromagnetic data. The data contain isolated magnetic anomalies that are presumably from the many drill platforms and their accompanying cultural objects such as buildings and pipe repositories (Figure 2). We present a new, automated method to reduce the amplitude of these cultural anomalies without affecting the magnetic signal from the surrounding geology.