This book provides a comprehensive introduction to techniques for quantitative subsidence analysis and visualization with example applications. Subsidence analysis is an essential step to understand basin evolution through geologic time and space in the study of sediments and sedimentary basins. Quantifying techniques have been developed and applied in many basin research projects to evaluate total, tectonic and thermal subsidence. They are also a pre-requisite for basin evolution modelling. Recent studies have applied visualization techniques to understand regional subsidence contexts and trends, which confirmed that three-dimensional visualization of the basin subsidence is highly helpful to gain insight into basin evolution. In this book, we show how geoscience and computer science can be effectively combined in advanced basin analysis, especially in terms of basin subsidence. Each type of subsidence analysis is introduced with example applications. In particular we present a study of the Vienna basin using BasinVis, a MATLAB-based program for analyzing and visualizing basin subsidence. Given its breadth of coverage, this book will benefit students in undergraduate and postgraduate courses and provide helpful information for research projects and industry applications.

A user-friendly, thorough introduction to quantitative modelling of sedimentary basins, illustrated throughout with real-world examples, applications and test exercises.

Dr. D.M.D. James, former head of Geological Research at Koninklijke/Shell Exploration and Production, Rijswijk, The Netherlands, describes this volume as follows: This advanced text treats the transformation of sediment into rock, a fundamental process which directly determines the storage and transmissibility properties of reservoirs and seals in hydrocarbon and groundwater systems and in strata-bound mineralization. Attention is paid to diagenetic data from classical petrography and geochemistry and the statistical techniques required to establish its significance and assist in its interpretation. Historically under-used methodologies such as mass balance calculations and the study of modern aquifer systems for understanding rock properties below ancient unconformities are also emphasised. New ground is broken by discussing physico-chemical processes and controls against a background of geological and hydrological evolution of sedimentary basins. Throughout, the emphasis is on the quantitative description and evaluation of the time-variant parameters controlling heat, fluid and mass transport in porous rock, and upon their integration using mathematics. A full mathematical background is provided and all the basic equations are rigorously derived. This book will prove essential for postgraduate academics and industrial professionals whose work involves predicting rock properties for basin evaluation, and is expected to stimulate new diagenetic research.

The first comprehensive presentation of methods and algorithms used in basin modeling, this text provides geoscientists and geophysicists with an in-depth view of the underlying theory and includes advanced topics such as probabilistic risk assessment methods.