Marine geophysical data : digital capture of paper records

This report is the first in a series of two reports related to the digital capture of geophysical records. This report describes the types of BGS Coastal and Marine analogue geophysical records and the techniques involved in scanning them in order to produce the highest possible quality TIFF image files. It is possible to convert scanned geophysical images into digital data which then can used for seismic interpretation with packages such as the Landmark system which is used in BGS. SEG-Y is the standard data format used for this. The conversion of geophysical images to digital SEG-Y files and the software used in processing is described in detail in a second report (Cooke et al., 2012. IR/12/061). Primarily between 1967 and 1992 data were recorded on paper only and as these records are deteriorating it is necessary to capture them digitally to preserve them for long term. The main part of the report introduces the history of the records obtained and provides comprehensive instructions for carrying out the scanning of the paper records.