MODMAG, a MATLAB program to model marine magnetic anomalies

Identifying marine magnetic anomalies is the most common way to date the ocean floor. Although the technique of magnetic anomaly identification has not changed since the 1960s, a forward modeling software that is easy to use, fast and automatic, without abstruse parameters, was lacking. We present a user-friendly MATLAB-based interface, called MODMAG, which allows one to perform forward modeling of marine magnetic anomalies resulting from several successive spreading periods with different spreading rates and asymmetric spreading possibly alternating with axial jumps. The main advantage of our program is that the management of the magnetized bodies resulting from such successive spreading periods is not the user's responsibility. Spreading parameters can be set easily for the picking of the marine magnetic anomalies. Non-specialist geophysicists or geologists can therefore easily identify marine magnetic anomalies with the help of MODMAG.