Using Outcrop Data in the 21st Century
Abstract
In this study, our aim is to show that new measuring and visualization techniques can have large implications for the future application of outcrop data. First, we review different techniques that can be used to collect digital outcrop data. We especially focus on outcrop capture methods such as photorealistic, 3-D digital outcrop models. These models can be rendered with stunning verisimilitude even on laptop computers. We show some of the applications of photorealistic outcrop models, focusing on how the models can be used directly in a virtual reality (VR) environment to produce sophisticated reservoir models with high accuracy. Finally, we show how the captured digital rocks can be visualized synchronously with the modeled ones. The benefits of visualizing the real world and the model at the same time and in an immersive visualization environment are significant, particularly as a platform for multidisciplinary discussions.
A part of this study is based on the Eocene Ainsa Turbidite System in the Spanish Pyrenees. More details of this turbidite system are provided in this Atlas in other papers. The outcrops are located along two flanks of a syncline (the Buil Syncline), and are basically two-dimensional. Therefore, one is forced to make a number of conceptual interpretations on the location and nature of the turbidite system in the subcrop between these two flanks. Other workers have contrasting views on this turbidite system. The aim here is not to claim a perfect model of the studied outcrops (which is impossible due to their nature), but to
Figures & Tables
Contents
Atlas of Deep-Water Outcrops

Tor H. Nilsen, a red-haired Scandinavian who stood more than six feet tall, died October 9, 2005, at his San Carlos, California, home. This was after a valiant five-year fight with melanoma cancer. He was 63. His ashes were scattered at his family plot in Norway in 2006.
He was born in New York City on November 29, 1941, to Mollie Abrahamson and Nils Marius Nilsen of Mandal, Norway, and was the first of their children to be born in the United States. After graduating from Brooklyn Tech, he earned his B.S. in geology from City College of New York in 1962. While there, his prowess on the basketball court impressed a scout from the New York Knicks, but Tor went on to graduate school and earned his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in geology from the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1964 and 1967, respectively. His M.S. thesis was a study of Precambrian metasedimentary deposits in the Lake Superior area, and his Ph.D. thesis was a study of Devonian alluvial-fan deposits of the Old Red Sandstone in western Norway.
Dr. Nilsen’s principal expertise was in depositional systems analysis, stratigraphic analysis, and the relationships among tectonics, eustasy, and sedimentation. He began his industry career in 1967 as a research geologist with the Shell Development Company in Houston, Texas, and Ventura, California, where he worked on the tectonics and sedimentation of Tertiary shelf systems of coastal California. He subsequently spent two years with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as the Military