Military Geology in War and Peace

In warfare, military geologists pursue five main categories of work: tactical and strategic terrain analysis, fortifications and tunneling, resource acquisition, defense installations, and field construction and logistics. In peace, they train for wartime operations and may be involved in peace-keeping and nation-building exercises. The classic dilemma for military geology has been whether support can best be provided by civilian technical-matter experts or by uniformed soldiers who routinely work with the combat units. In addition to the introductory paper this volume includes 24 papers, covering selected aspects of the history of military geology from the early 19th century through the recent Persian Gulf war, military education and operations, terrain analysis, engineering geology in the military, use of military geology in diplomacy and peace keeping, and the future of military geology.
A proposed method for characterizing fracture patterns in denied areas
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Published:January 01, 1998
Abstract
Knowledge of three-dimensional, subsurface fracture patterns is necessary to solve many military and engineering problems. An understanding of subsurface fracture patterns is also essential for the field army with respect to penetrability and weapons effects. Many areas of the world in which the army has an interest are inaccessible (denied areas), and analysis of remotely sensed imagery provides a way to get needed information. This chapter describes a method that provides the basis for three-dimensional characterization of fracture patterns using remotely sensed imagery. Analysis of fracture patterns in the Dartmoor granite of southwest England shows that lineations delineated on imagery are very long, widely spaced joints that are members of joint sets found in outcrop. There are no statistically significant differences in orientation between joints and lineations; the smaller image scale allows the more widely spaced and longer members of a given joint set to be seen. With these relations established, fractal analysis of joint and lineation patterns on Dartmoor granite and in the East Pioneer Mountains, Montana, was done to determine whether fractal geometry could be used to predict subsurface fracture patterns. On Dartmoor, mean fractal dimension for vertical joint sets from outcrop and lineation patterns from imagery were comparable, but this was not the case for the Pioneer granites. Further research must address the problem of predicting three-dimensional, subsurface fracture patterns using remotely sensed imagery prior to attempting to meet the needs of the field army in denied areas.