The importance of topographic corrections on magnetotelluric response data from rugged regions of Anatolia

Topographic irregularities cause some distortions of magnetotelluric (MT) fields. In the vicinity of a topographic feature, the TM-mode distortion increases with the height and inclination of the slope. It is well-known that TM-mode (E(perpendicular to)) topographic effects are much greater than TE-mode (E(parallel to)) distortions. We have made a study of MT anomalies in TM-mode due to two-dimensional topography. In order to reduce these effects, the distortion tensor stripping technique was used. After corrections, the resulting data can be interpreted as if they were obtained over a flat surface and depend only on the subsurface structure. However, this technique sometimes causes some geometrical distortions of the real subsurface structure. One of our aims is to overcome this failure. We have modified the correction coefficients by considering the actual one-dimensional geology. Model studies showed that our approach is especially useful in removing the terrain effects on complex 2D subsurface structures. The other purpose of this study is to emphasize the importance of a proper terrain correction for data from sites having mountainous topography over complex geology, e.g. strike-slip faults, suture zones and rift valleys. Some examples of MT data sets collected from the North Anatolian Fault Zone and from the thrust regions of the Western Taurides will be presented.