Explorer Article

Shaking all over? One geologist who has been studying Missouri's New Madrid seismic zone believes the origin of the earthquakes there lies beneath the Gulf of Mexico.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Emphasis Article

Seafloor Mapping: Scientists are using 3-D seismic data to map the seafloor at greater depths and higher resolution than ever before.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Geophysical Corner

This month, we further evolve this framework to build a palinspastically quantitative reassembly of continents and continental blocks that were separated during the Mesozoic rifting and subsequent drift in the Gulf of Mexico region -- key features.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Geophysical Corner

The basement fault block pattern started last month continues. This month the author attempts to substantiate the claim that many oil and gas fields are controlled by basement. Some geologists may concede that the evidence for underlying basement control is convincing.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Geophysical Corner

New and strikingly different uses of aeromagnetics are based on a better understanding of basement geology and how it affects the overlying sedimentary section.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Geophysical Corner

This month's column is titled 'Magnetostratigraphy Adds a Temporal Dimension to Basin Analysis.' Knowledge of basin evolution rates provides insight into the timing of hydrocarbon generation, facies migration and structural trap formation.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Article

Pitman and co-researcher William B.F. Ryan have written a book to document their theory, Noah's Flood: The New Scientific Discoveries About the Event That Changed History, published recently by Simon & Schuster. This 352-page work describes a scientific investigation that mixes geology with oceanography, anthropology, linguistics and legend.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Geophysical Corner

This month's column is part two of a two-part series on magnetotelluries.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
VG Abstract

In comparison with the known boundary conditions that promote salt deformation and flow in sedimentary basins, the processes involved with the mobilization of clay-rich detrital sediments are far less well established. This talk will use seismic examples in different tectonic settings to document the variety of shale geometries that can be formed under brittle and ductile deformations.

Request a visit from Juan I. Soto!

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
DL Abstract

Physics is an essential component of geophysics but there is much that physics cannot know or address. 

Request a visit from John Castagna!

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
DL Abstract

Around 170 million years ago, the Gulf of Mexico basin flooded catastrophically, and the pre-existing landscape, which had been a very rugged, arid, semi-desert world, was drowned beneath an inland sea of salt water. The drowned landscape was then buried under kilometers of salt, perfectly preserving the older topography. Now, with high-quality 3D seismic data, the salt appears as a transparent layer, and the details of the drowned world can be seen in exquisite detail, providing a unique snapshot of the world on the eve of the flooding event. We can map out hills and valleys, and a system of river gullies and a large, meandering river system. These rivers in turn fed into a deep central lake, whose surface was about 750m below global sea level. This new knowledge also reveals how the Louann Salt was deposited. In contrast to published models, the salt was deposited in a deep water, hypersaline sea. We can estimate the rate of deposition, and it was very fast; we believe that the entire thickness of several kilometers of salt was laid down in a few tens of thousands of years, making it possibly the fastest sustained deposition seen so far in the geological record.

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Request a visit from Frank Peel!

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
DL Abstract

Three-dimensional (3D) seismic-reflection surveys provide one of the most important data types for understanding subsurface depositional systems. Quantitative analysis is commonly restricted to geophysical interpretation of elastic properties of rocks in the subsurface. Wide availability of 3D seismic-reflection data and integration provide opportunities for quantitative analysis of subsurface stratigraphic sequences. Here, we integrate traditional seismic-stratigraphic interpretation with quantitative geomorphologic analysis and numerical modeling to explore new insights into submarine-channel evolution.

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Request a visit from Jacob Covault!

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)

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