Non UXO Applications of Magnetometer Data Analysis on Shallow Geophysical Surveys

In recent years there has been an increased focus on surveys to aid identification of potential items of Unexploded Ordnance (UXO). These may be located in a particular area due to aerial bombing, mine fields, munitions dumping, naval conflicts or military shipwrecks. Consequently large scale magnetometer datasets are becoming significantly more common. Occasionally with these detailed magnetometer surveys, further applications of the data are overlooked whilst focussing in on small scale events and anomalies. This paper presents two case studies of regional wind farm surveys which demonstrate how valuable magnetometer data are to an integrated interpretation. The first shows how anomalies of less than 1nT, which would not be interpretable in isolation, reveal the presence of a buried pipeline when processed as a complete dataset. In the second case, by using enhanced processing techniques, a series of buried channels is identified which would be difficult to interpret from pinger data alone. These case studies illustrate that magnetometer data should not be overlooked as an interpretation tool and just used to identify potential UXO or debris items that should be avoided during standard site survey practice.