While magnetometers can be used to help map basin shape at a regional scale, they are more commonly used to map hazards to coal mining, such as basaltic intrusions (dykes, sills, and volcanic plug) that destroy resources and are dangerous to longwall mining equipment. Magnetometers can also locate zones ignited by lightning and map siderite (an impurity in coal).
The best survey results are achieved on the ground in high-resolution surveys (with approximately 10 m line spacing and 0.5 m station spacing). Bore-hole magnetometers using a Ferretcan also assist when coal seams are deep, by using multiple sills or looking beneath surface basalt flows.
Modern surveys generally use magnetometers with GPS technology to automatically record the magnetic field and their location. The data set is then corrected with data from a second magnetometer (the base station) that is left stationary and records the change in the Earth's magnetic field during the survey.