TOPOGRAPHIC AND ISOSTATIC CORRECTIONS TO GRAVITY SURVEYS IN MOUNTAINOUS AREAS*

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Abstract
In mountainous areas it is an inadequate procedure to reduce gravity observations by merely subtracting the effect of an infinite flat slab of material between the station and sea‐level, and adding a terrain correction. A programme is described which directly computes the effect of masses above sea‐level, and mass‐deficiencies below it; as well as the effect of compensating masses under the Pratt and Airy isostatic systems. As an example, the method has been applied to a regional gravity survey of Papua and New Guinea where it is seen to remove the usually high correlation of the Bouguer anomaly with local topography.