Compression of Geophysical Data by means of an Equivalent Layer

The efficient storage of geophysical data, particularly if it is to be transferred across networks<br>such as the Internet, is of major importance. Suitable compression of data can cut data<br>transmission costs and times dramatically. The equivalent layer compression (ELC) technique,<br>instead of storing the magnetic or gravity data itself stores a model whose geophysical response<br>is used to generate that data. This can result in compressed file sizes of the order of less than 10%<br>of the original file size, better than can be obtained with commercial compression packages.<br>While the compression operation is computationally demanding, the decompression is relatively<br>simple, and the technique allows portions of the dataset to be decompressed separately.