Abstract This volume explores how structural geology can be applied to industrial activities. It includes case studies that exhibit the state of the art and provides an overview of current and future trends in structural geology. The constituent papers cover a wide range of topics, including regional tectonics; trap and prospect definition; fault, fold and fracture analysis; seal analysis; interpretation of geophysical, borehole, core and outcrop data. The volume demonstrates how structural concepts ultimately create value and how academic institutions, specialist consultants and operating companies work together at a variety of scales and in varied geological settings to explore for and produce natural resources for the economic benefit of society.

Abstract Rapidly developing methods of digital acquisition, visualization and analysis allow highly detailed outcrop models to be constructed, and used as analogues to provide quantitative information about sedimentological and structural architectures from reservoir to subseismic scales of observation. Terrestrial laser-scanning (lidar) and high precision Real-Time Kinematic GPS are key survey technologies for data acquisition. 3D visualization facilities are used when analysing the outcrop data. Analysis of laser-scan data involves picking of the point-cloud to derive interpolated stratigraphic and structural surfaces. The resultant data can be used as input for object-based models, or can be cellularized and upscaled for use in grid-based reservoir modelling. Outcrop data can also be used to calibrate numerical models of geological processes such as the development and growth of folds, and the initiation and propagation of fractures.

Abstract Traditional methods of geological mapping were developed within the inherent constraints imposed by paper-based publishing. These methods are still dominant in the earth sciences, despite recent advances in digital technology in a range of fields, including global-positioning systems, geographical information systems (GIS), 3-D computer visualization, portable computer devices, knowledge engineering and artificial intelligence. Digital geological mapping has the potential to overcome some serious limitations of paper-based maps. Although geological maps are usually highly interpretive, traditional maps show little of the raw field data collected or the reasoning used during interpretation. In geological mapping, interpretation typically relies on the prior experience and prior knowledge of the mapper, but this input is rarely published explicitly with the final printed map. Digital mapping techniques open up new possibilities for publishing maps digitally in a GIS format, together with spatially referenced raw field data, field photographs, explanation of the interpretation process and background information relevant to the map area. Having field data in a digital form allows the use of interpolation methods based on fuzzy logic to quantify some types of uncertainty associated with subsurface interpretation, and the use of this uncertainty to evaluate the validity of competing interpretations.

Abstract Work of the past fifty years, or so, has shed much additional light on the phylogeny and history of the Order Rodentia. Classical views have been challenged, and new concepts invoked, or older views rediscovered. Of these new concepts, hystricomorphy, rather than protrogomorphy, as a primitive state for rodents seems difficult to accept, and is not really new. Hystricognathy versus sciurognathy as the fundamental division of the Rodentia seems perilous if pardlelism is as important a phenomenon as is frequently suggested. The argument for multiserial incisor enamel, rather than pauciserial, as the primitive incisor kind is very persuasive, but perhaps more work is needed on Eocene rodent enamel. Punctuated equilibrium, if really a new idea, seems promising in explaining the obscure origin of most rodent groups, but gradualism is evident in many specific lines of descent in rodents. Virtually excluding temporal consideration from phylogenetic studies seems extreme, as does cladistic analysis when it excludes parallelisms and paraphyletic groups. In spite of recent work, the gap between Eocene groups such as the Paramyidae and Ctenodactyloidea, and the Oligocene and later families remains considerable, and largely unexplained. Extraterrestrial collision events in this case can hardly be regarded as pertinent for rodents.