GIS sudah banyak dipakai juga utk membuat Paleogeographyc map.
sehingga pembuatan Plate tectonic reconstructructionpun menjadi lebih teliti
lagi. Pembuatan rekonstruksi tektonik tentunya selalu berskala besar paling
tidak skala regional sehingga efek kelengkungan bumi tidak lagi dapat
diabaikan.
salam
RDP
=======
Using GIS, Oil Exploration Gets a Better Grasp of
Timehttp://www.gis.com/specialty/naturalresources/pipeline.html
Paleo--meaning "old" or "ancient," used especially in reference
to former geologic time periods. Paleogeography--the science of representing
the earth's geographic features belonging to any part of the geologic past.
PaleoGIS--ArcView GIS-based application developed by the PALEOMAP Foundation
and used by nearly every major oil company in the world to study what the
earth's surface looked like millions of years ago and to help to understand
where new oil exploration opportunities might exist today.
These terms apply to the cutting edge work that is taking place
today in the petroleum exploration industry. Using ArcView GIS, geologists
can now not only understand the spatial dynamics involved in petroleum
exploration, but they can also add a fourth dimension, time, into the
equation for a truly innovative GIS application.
"You must take advantage of time in your geological analysis,"
says Malcolm Ross, director, PALEOMAP Foundation. "To do otherwise is to
base your analysis on partial information. ArcView GIS allowed us to create
a customized solution that adds the temporal dimension to our analysis.
Because we integrated our PaleoGIS with ArcView GIS, we provide a solution
that is familiar to all of the major oil companies that are using our
software."
Based in Houston, Texas, PALEOMAP Foundation was formed in 1996
by Ross and his partner Christopher R. Scotese with contributions from major
oil and mining companies around the world. These companies wanted to promote
research of plate tectonics, paleoclimatology, paleogeography, and
paleoceanography, and their influence on sedimentary rock formations today.
The contributors that fund PALEOMAP Foundation and receive
foundation services are impressive: nearly all of the major oil companies
including ARCO, Chevron, Conoco, Mobil, and Texaco.
By understanding where rock and oil were hundreds of millions of
years ago, predictions can be made as to where they may be today. Also, when
a well or oil field is discovered, analyzing where the earth's surface
plates were in the past can oftentimes indicate the size of the discovery.
"If, for example, we are trying to determine the extent of an
oil reservoir sediment, it's important for us to know where that area was,
say, 100 million years ago when those rocks were being deposited to know how
extensive it might be," says Jeff Kraus, staff geologist with Mobil New
Exploration & Producing Ventures.
For many years Ross and Scotese were successful in providing
custom solutions for companies sponsoring their research. The problem was
that each company had different software needs and hardware configurations.
This caused Ross to evaluate the companies he served and reevaluate his own
software solution. Whatever the solution, it would have to be an open, cross
platform one.
"For deploying an effective exploration program, companies need
to analyze plate tectonic data," says Ross. "Analyzing data means
visualizing it spatially as well. Only by visualizing data, taking the
temporal dimension of data into account, can organizations look at the big
picture and make the best decisions."
An Extensible Solution
In the interviews and needs assessment process, one common
denominator that Ross noticed was that every one of the major oil companies
he works with is familiar with ArcView GIS software. The software meets his
needs in terms of platform and software independence: it would work in any
existing IS structure.
Ross selected ArcView GIS software for his spatial solution. The
software's extensible architecture allowed Ross to evolve his software
package into an ArcView GIS software extension.
"ArcView GIS made sense," says Ross. "Everyone I work with is
already familiar with it, and there is a tremendous advantage to organizing
data spatially."
The PaleoGIS solution was embraced by the petroleum industry and
has received high marks from users.
"ArcView GIS allows us to bring in our own data and intersect it
with the plate data out of Ross's software," says Dave Walsh, senior staff
geologist, Mobil New Exploration & Producing Ventures. "The functionality,
coupled with ArcView GIS software's intuitive interface, makes it a valuable
tool for us."
Users can rotate point, line, and polygon data back into their
paleoposition and physically attach the data to the plate. That allows them
to move well, fault, and field data back into position so users can look at
data at the time it is forming.
"We have used PaleoGIS to quickly animate a paleoreconstruction
of an area to assess attributes of a petroleum system and communicate our
ideas graphically," says Matt Strickland, geological advisor, Conoco. "The
ease with which we can integrate existing data within an ArcView GIS project
into a PaleoGIS project, use the 'cookie cutter' facility, and then rotate
that data to any given time period has been valuable."
Copyright � ESRI
