MagMapper

MagMapper: Locate Abandoned Well Casings with Your Smartphone

In the United States, hundreds of thousands of oil and gas wells have been abandoned or “orphaned”. Locating these wells is the first step towards properly plugging them, but traditional geophysics survey equipment is expensive and requires specific training to use.

MagMapper puts well-detection technology in your pocket. With a simple walking survey, MagMapper utilizes the magnetometer built into your phone to create a magnetic anomaly map. With no additional hardware you can detect buried well casings.

How it Works

Walk a grid pattern over the desired survey area with the MagMapper app running. The app logs magnetometer readings and GPS position, then processes that data into a magnetic intensity map. Steel well casings create distinctive magnetic anomalies allowing users to pinpoint well locations from the walking survey.

Who it’s for

State and Federal agencies conducting field surveys and orphaned well inventories

Landowners looking for undocumented wells on their property

Environmental Research and Field Technicians

Citizen Scientists!

Key Features

Real-time magnetic field visualization

GPS tagged survey data for mapping

Exportable survey data for further analysis (CSV file)

Gamification

Leaderboard: Compare your contributions with other citizens. Climb the leaderboard by completing quality surveys

Achievements & Badges- Earn badges for milestones like completing your first survey, finding anomalies, or becoming a top contributor.

Activity Scoring- Your activity score reflects both the quantity and quality of your surveys. Stay active to maintain your ranking!

MagMapper has been compared against research grade magnetometer equipment, including helicopter and ground-based magnetometer surveys to evaluate detection accuracy and appropriate survey line spacing.

The MagMapper project is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (CATALOG program)

MagMapper is developed by the CIRES MagMapper team at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Website: https://www.magmapper.app/