October News

For us, one positive consequence of the current industry downturn is that we’ve been able to spend more time writing-up the results from a whole range of projects that we’ve not had time to publish over the last 10 or 12 years! So now we’re busy dusting-off a variety of different datasets, and working on a number of papers including testing of various geospatial technologies, new insights into fracture systems, structural and tectonic interpretations from areas of active exploration – and more … Watch this space!

One of our recent publications is an appraisal of the suitability of structure-from-motion photogrammetry relative to terrestrial laser-scanning (lidar) for building digital 3D copies of outcrops.  Main image (above): Comparison of virtual outcrops created using lidar and photogrammetry (Wasia Fm. UAE, from Wilkinson et al. 2016).

Thanks to improved software, photogrammetry is rapidly becoming more widely used, and in recent months has been increasingly hyped as the new wonder-method of outcrop capture! We have very extensive hands-on experience using both photogrammetry and lidar, and we know that each method has its pros and cons. Most importantly, when we’re acquiring commercial data, we need to be certain that our spatial precision exceeds our clients’ requirements, and that we’ll be able to get high quality data even in real-world conditions. See a pre-print of our Geosphere article for a detailed comparison of these methods (as applied to outcrops of fractured carbonates in UK and UAE).

Analysis of fault-related folding in the Inner Moray Firth, from Alex Lapadat’s recently published paper.

Also published this month is a great study by Alex Lapadat on the occurrence and development of folding related to normal faulting within a mechanically heterogeneous sedimentary sequence, with examples from the Inner Moray Firth, UK.