Draping aeromagnetic data in areas of rugged topography

Abstract

Expanding the magnetic field intensity measured at a constant altitude in a Taylor series allows the efficient continuation of such fields onto any given arbitrary surface. This is particularly useful for draping of constant altitude surveys in areas of rugged topography. The Taylor series approach allows the continuation to points below the level of the shallowest magnetic source present. Low-pass filtering is necessary to ensure the convergence of the series. The filtering parameters can be estimated from the power spectrum of the observed field and the maximum continuation distance. A synthetic data example shows that convergence of the series is slowest in areas of high vertical gradients, usually associated with body edges, and large (downward) continuation distances. The Taylor series method is used to drape data from a constant barometric altitude survey from central British Columbia (Canada) onto a surface with a constant terrain clearance. This survey is then joined to an adjacent survey flown in the draped mode. The resolution and amplitudes of the two surveys is seen to be comparable and results in a more coherent combined data set than that where no computational draping is done.