Reduction of potential field data to a horizontal plane

Abstract

Most existing techniques for potential field data enhancement and interpretation require data on a horizontal plane. Hence, when observations are made on an irregular surface, reduction to a horizontal plane is necessary. To effect this reduction, an equivalent source distribution that models the observed field is computed on a mirror image of the observation surface. This irregular mirror image surface is then replaced by a horizontal plane and the effect of the equivalent sources is computed on the required horizontal level. This calculated field approximates the field reduced to a horizontal plane. The good quality of this approximation is demonstrated by two‐dimensional synthetic data examples in which the maximum errors occur in areas of steep topographic gradients and increased magnetic field intensity. The approach is also applied to a portion of a helicopter‐borne aeromagnetic survey from the Gaspé region in Quebec, Canada, where the results are a horizontal shifting of anomaly maxima of up to 150 m and changes in anomaly amplitudes of up to 100 nT.