New approaches to estimation of magnetotelluric parameters

Fully efficient robust data processing procedures were developed and tested for single station and remote reference magnetotelluric (Mr) data. Substantial progress was made on development, testing and comparison of optimal procedures for single station data. A principal finding of this phase of the research was that the simplest robust procedures can be more heavily biased by noise in the (input) magnetic fields, than standard least squares estimates. To deal with this difficulty we developed a robust processing scheme which combined the regression M-estimate with coherence presorting. This hybrid approach greatly improves impedance estimates, particularly in the low signal-to-noise conditions often encountered in the dead band'' (0.1--0.0 hz). The methods, and the results of comparisons of various single station estimators are described in detail. Progress was made on developing methods for estimating static distortion parameters, and for testing hypotheses about the underlying dimensionality of the geological section.