Description and Computer Modelling of Patterns in Sedimentary
Environments
Supervisors
Research Affiliations
Degree Type/Name
Pre-requisites
Student Support
Collaboration
A/Prof Annette George and Dr June Hill (CSIRO)
Centre for Petroleum Geoscience
MSc or Honours – Geology, Petroleum Geoscience
Degree in geology or computing degree with geoscience
An Honours student undertaking this project would be eligible for
financial support from the UWA Geoscience Foundation.
This project is in collaboration with CSIRO Petroleum and a
Perth-based petroleum company.
Skills
The project aims to strengthen sedimentological skills particularly in relation to
understanding patterns of channel-related deposits (deep sea fan and/or fluvial) and
integration computer modelling to develop basic level of skill in geometric modelling, statistics,
programming and pattern recognition. This project would be ideal for a student who wishes to
integrate geological information (particularly related to sedimentary basins) with computerbased research. These skills would be highly relevant to resource exploration in sedimentary
basins particularly petroleum but also groundwater and basin-hosted mineral resources.
Project Description
When a geologist creates a map, cross-section or 3D model of a region they use spatially
located data such as data collected from field mapping, core logging, downhole well or
seismic data. However, they also use geological knowledge, such as knowledge about typical
size and geometry of particular sedimentary units and/or spatial relationships between
sedimentary units, to help fill in the spaces between data points.
CSIRO Petroleum is developing a computer program that automatically generates 3D models
of sedimentary successions that include geological knowledge as well as spatially located
data in order to simulate the job done by a geologist. One of the challenges of this project is
to encode geological information on depositional environments in a form that can be used by
the computer program.
The objective of this project is to study one or more depositional environments and document
the geological knowledge required to describe the depositional patterns; then to collect this
information and convert it into the appropriate format for the program. The student will then be
able to use the CSIRO program to test whether their description produces geologically
realistic models by comparing the output to outcrops or modern day sedimentary systems.
Some field-based work, e.g. documenting a modern system (e.g. fluvial), may be included.