Aeromagnetic data collected in areas with severe diurnal magnetic variations (auroral zones) are difficult to level. This paper describes levelling of an aeromagnetic survey where such conditions prevail, and where sophisticated levelling techniques are needed. Corrections based on piecewise low‐order polynomial functions are often used to minimize mis‐ties in aeromagnetic data. We review this technique and describe similar mis‐tie fitting methods based on low‐pass filter levelling, tensioned B‐spline levelling and median levelling. It is demonstrated that polynomial levelling, low‐pass filter levelling and tensioned B‐spline levelling depend on the careful editing of outlying mis‐ties to avoid the introduction of false anomalies. These three techniques are equally efficient at removing level errors. Median levelling also removes level errors efficiently, but it is more robust in the sense that mis‐tie editing is not required. This is due to the inherent noise‐removal capabilities of the median filter. After mis‐tie editing, the total field anomalies of the other three techniques closely resemble the unedited median‐levelled total field anomaly.
We describe a new technique that can be used to level data collected along regular and irregular line patterns with or without tie-line control. The technique incorporates a moving differential median filter to minimize line-level errors, to level survey-line data, and to microlevel data with no tie-line control. This overcomes the problem of standard leveling methods that lose their effectiveness with irregular flight patterns.To validate the method, we use it to level very-lowfrequency (VLF) electromagnetic (EM) data from a helicopter survey where flight lines are parallel. Leveling is also performed on a set of vintage aeromagnetic data from the North Sea, gathered from nonparallel flight lines. Results show that the differential median filter leveling technique is superior to the standard leveling method because it results in fewer line errors and less distortion of high-wavenumber anomalies when processing irregular survey lines, making the method suitable for a wide variety of data sets.
High‐pass filtered aeromagnetic profiles from the Mid‐Norwegian continental shelf, displayed as shaded relief versions of color stripes, provide a lucid picture of sedimentary layering and structure not easily displayed by proper application of modern enhancement techniques to images of the gridded aeromagnetic data. We show that when the aim is to analyze anomalies related to sedimentary features, it is more useful to study shaded relief versions of the profile data than to study digitally enhanced images of high‐pass filtered or calculated gradient data; a reason for this is probably the loss of high‐wavenumber, very low amplitude, information in the gridding process. The reprocessed data sets reveal anomaly patterns that are interpreted to originate from the following magnetic sources: (1) Quaternary overburden and bathymetric features, (2) magnetic sedimentary rocks, the subcropping sedimentary rock units, (3) magnetic basement in the structural highs and in the coastal zone, and (4) igneous intrusives at relatively deep levels within sedimentary basins. West of the basement rocks along the coast, the subcropping wedge of Mesozoic to Tertiary sediments is characterized by a distinct set of subparallel anomalies. Also, sedimentary layering within the Tertiary can be resolved. Short to intermediate wavelength anomalies correlate with the Late Jurassic faults of the Halten Terrace.
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