Journal of Structural Geology paper available online

The paper I recently had accepted in the Journal of Structural Geology now has a DOI number, and is available online, albeit behind a paywall. Anyone who can't access it for free and doesn't fancy blowing $31.50 can drop me an e-mail, and I'll bung them a PDF.

The long and short of faults

The first thing I have to do here is once again apologise for neglecting this blog. I have a number of excuses for this that I won't bother to go into.

Almost a month ago now, I wrote a short post on a paper that has been accepted for publication by the Journal of Structural Geology, and said I would write a bit more "probably next week". Better late than never.

The paper is entitled "Structural geology and 4D evolution of a half-graben: new digital outcrop modelling techniques applied to the Nukhul half-graben, Suez rift, Egypt" and the authors are myself, Dave Hodgetts, Frank Rarity, Rob Gawthorpe and Ian Sharp. It looks at a well-exposed extensional half-graben (the Wadi Nukhul half-graben) in the Suez rift, Egypt. We have collected a large amount of terrestrial LIDAR data from this half-graben, and used it to accurately map the structure and stratigraphy of the study area. By combining those data with our structural and sedimentological analysis, we can get an idea of how the fault system evolved over time, by looking at how sedimentation responds to the evolving structure.

There have been a number of studies looking at the evolution of normal fault systems, most of which have used seismic data or conventional field data and have looked at relatively simple fault systems. Seismic data, particularly 3D seismic, is great for looking at these questions because it has perfect 3D coverage. However, the maximum resolution tends to be on the order of 20 to 40 m. In the Wadi Nukhul area, the stratigraphic units we are interested in looking at are quite thin (up to 100 m or so), and more importantly the variations in thickness are quite subtle. Thickness variations in the strata that were laid down during active faulting tell you about the fault activity, so we need to be able to map out those thickness variations as accurately as we can.

Essentially, there are two hypotheses as to how normal fault systems develop. The first is that a large number of small faults initiate. Depending on their spatial relationship to neighbouring faults, these might die out, or they might grow in size (and displacement) and link to neighbouring faults. So there is a progression from a large number of low-displacement faults (in the "rift initiation" phase to a small number of large displacement faults, which have formed by the linkage of fault segments that were initially isolated from each other (in the "rift climax" phase). So faults increase their length gradually through time by growing laterally and linking to other faults. The second hypothesis is that faults establish their length very early in their history, and then accrue displacement through time without significantly increasing their length. This seems more likely to be applicable to reactivated faults. There is more on this in Morley et al. 2007.

Here's a simplified map of the study area:


For this summary, we're interested in the Nukhul fault. This is the main fault that controls deposition of syn-rift strata (Abu Zenima and Nukhul formations) in its hanging-wall. You can see that in plan view the fault is segmented: different portions of the fault have differing strike. Now, here's a graph showing how throw (vertical displacement) varies along the fault, taken from a horizon that we mapped on the LIDAR data :

There are a couple of things to notice here. Firstly, the maximum throw is approximately 1 km and occurs where the Nukhul fault intersects with the Baba-Markha fault to the south; throw then decreases towards the fault tip towards the north. Superimposed on that larger pattern, it can be seen that where the fault strike changes, there are minima in throw values, while in the centre of the fault segments there are maxima in throw values.

The interpretation of this is that the fault segments we can see at the present day, which have differing strike orientations, were initially isolated from each other. The variations in throw are then a kind of hangover from when the fault segments were isolated: the throw minima represent palaeo-fault tips at which displacement was zero before the fault segments became linked.

So what was the timing of linkage of the fault segments? It is difficult to know this unequivocally, but three lines of evidence suggest that the linkage was early, around the break between deposition of the Abu Zenima and Nukhul formations (which is locally marked by an angular unconformity). Firstly, the Abu Zenima Formation seems to have been deposited along the entire Nukhul fault. In the map above, it can be seen that the Abu Zenima is exposed at the linkage point between segments 2 and 3 of the fault. Secondly, the sedimentary facies in the areas around linkage points is much coarser than elsewhere in late Abu Zenima and early Nukhul time. That suggests that the linkage points were also sediment input points at those times. Thirdly, there is active faulting close to the linkage points prior to deposition of the Nukhul Formation. This suggests that those areas were subsiding rapidly at that time, perhaps because of the linkage of the fault segments. If this is correct, then the linkage of fault segments occurred within the first 2.5 million years of rifting (and perhaps much sooner). The Nukhul fault therefore seems to be an example of a normal fault that established its length fairly early in the rift history. This would make sense, because the orientations of some of the fault segments suggest that they were inherited from regional basement structures.

There is plenty more in the paper, but I'll post a link to a PDF when it becomes available.

Image of the week #5

A slightly different image this week; this comes from the paper I've just had accepted for publication in the Journal of Stuctural Geology. This is a normal fault plane from the Gulf of Suez (surprise!), modelled in TrapTester software from our LiDAR data, and contoured for throw values (throw is the amount of vertical displacement of strata across the fault). We are in the hanging wall, looking toward the fault plane. As is typical, the throw contours are elliptical, and throw is highest at a roughly central point, decreasing outward. A reasonable assumption is that the fault initiated at the point of highest throw. This occurs at a level above the pre-rift/syn-rift contact, suggesting that this fault initiated within the syn-rift strata relatively late in the history of the rift.

First Gulf of Suez paper accepted for publication

I'm absolutely delighted, because I heard this morning that one of the papers on the Gulf of Suez work we're doing at Manchester has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Structural Geology, pending minor revisions. I will write a little more on the paper when I get a chance, probably next week. To summarise, it uses the LiDAR data we have in the Gulf of Suez to reconstruct the geological history of small fault-controlled basin, in a more detailed way than has been possible with other techniques. This is the first paper on the Gulf of Suez LiDAR work to come out, and I think that it is suitably impressive. Watch this space for more details.

Image of the week #4

Apologies for the brief hiatus in the image of the week. It's the start of term, I'm moving house, and I have an interview on Monday. Not that I'm making excuses or anything.



This is a nice illustration of sedimentation and tectonics in the Suez rift. The picture is taken on the footwall of the Nukhul fault, looking west into the syn-rift units preserved in the hanging-wall. There is an approximately east-striking fault cutting the syn-rift units. The Abu Zenima Formation can be seen thinning dramatically onto the footwall of that fault. The thinning is accomodated partly by onlap onto the underlying pre-rift units, and mainly by erosional truncation at the base of the Nukhul Formation. In the hanging-wall, the Nukhul Formation is slightly thicker than in the footwall, and also contains a higher proportion of fluvial conglomerate. The displacement on the fault can be seen to increase downward.

Sayed Gooda: a tribute

There was sad news for me this week, and for more or less everyone who has done geological fieldwork in Egypt. Sayed Gooda, our driver on our trips to Sinai, has passed away.

Without Sayed, our work would have been a lot more difficult. Sayed didn't just drive us, over bad roads and difficult terrain. He looked after us, kept us out of trouble, made us delicious sandwiches for lunch (the highlight of the Sinai field day), and tried valiantly to teach us Arabic . Practically everyone who has worked on the Gulf of Suez owes something to Sayed. I will always remember arriving in a hot, noisy and fume-choked Cairo for the first time, nerves jangling from an overnight flight from Amsterdam, and being put at ease right away by the big friendly man in the big friendly green jeep.

Sayed was in Saudi Arabia when he passed away, and has been buried there. In the e-mail telling us of his death, his friend Tarek Moustafa wrote "I think he died Happy as this would have been a dream come true to him to die in the Holy lands". We can only hope so. Thanks for everything, Sayed.

Image of the week #3

Another one from the Suez Rift. This is my former colleague Chris Ott (hi Chris!), standing in front of a syn-rift boulder conglomerate containing various pre-rift and syn-rift clasts (the one to the right of Chris is probably a Precambrian basement basalt clast). These are actually some of the smaller clasts in the conglomerate: lower down in the same unit there are limestone blocks that are several tens of metres across, which makes mapping in the area "interesting". The unit is in the steeply dipping limb of a fault-propagation syncline in the hanging wall of a major block-bounding normal fault that was active during deposition. It is interpreted as a debris flow triggered by slope collapse.

Image of the week #1

This is an idea that I've blatantly stolen from the Clastic Detritus blog. Each Friday I'll put up an image: probably mainly field photographs, but also computer-generated images and such like from my digital outcrop mapping research.


This week's image is a nice example of a fault zone from the Suez rift, Egypt (There will probably be a lot of images from Egypt in this series). This is the Nukhul fault, juxtposing Cretaceous chalk of the pre-rift Sudr Formation against the syn-rift Miocene Abu Zenima and Nukhul formations. A sliver of Eocene pre-rift Darat Formation is caught between the paired slip surfaces of the main fault zone, and is internally deformed. In the hanging wall of the main fault zone (to the right), a series of minor faults occur in a damage zone about 50 m wide. The minor faults tip out downward, with one fault showing a duplex pattern near its tip as it merges into bedding.

Geoscience in the key of Radiohead

Recently Radiohead produced a video for their song "House of Cards", using data acquisition technology similar to that which I'm using for my research. They used a Velodyne LIDAR system to capture images of the band. This gives me a flimsy excuse to write a bit about the use of LIDAR technology for geological mapping in the research group I work with at the University of Manchester.

LIDAR data collection in the Suez rift.

LIDAR (LIght Detection And Ranging) uses a laser beam to scan objects, in our case rock outcrops, and returns series of points that are accurately located in space (within a couple of centimetres) and also have a value for the intensity of the returned laser pulse. This produces what is known as a 'point cloud' dataset. We use a calibrated digital camera to give colour to the points. A differential GPS with sub-metre accuracy allows us to accurately georeference the data. The system that Radiohead used collects up to 1.8 million points a second. The system we use manages 12,500 points a second, which is still fast enough for us to scan an outcrop on a scale of the order of a few hundred metres by a hundred metres in 10 to 15 minutes, with a point spacing of 5 to 10 cm. One of our datasets captures an entire half-graben in the Suez rift, and comprises something on the order of 5 billion points.

Point cloud dataset, coloured using digital images, with geological interpretation added.

Digital Elevation Model derived from one of our Gulf of Suez datsets, and coloured with a 60 cm resolution satellite image. Red dots show the positions of the LIDAR scan stations. The whole dataset comprises more than 5 billion points and covers an area of approximately 9 km2, with a point spacing of 5 to 10 cm.

So far this perhaps sounds like an unnecessarily elaborate system for doing geological mapping. After all, you don't actually need much more than a map, compass and a bunch of colouring pencils to create a perfectly acceptable geological map. So what actual advantages does it give us? It allows us to do accurate geological mapping of surfaces that are exposed in vertical cliff faces, which is difficult to do in other ways because the faces are not easily accessible, and because it is difficult to map vertical faces accurately on horizontal maps or aerial photos. The data is digital, and that allows us to export our geological interpretations to modelling software of the type typically used in the oil industry. This allows us to use outcrop data in a similar way to how sub-surface data (mainly seismic) is used in the oil industry, but with much higher resolution (centimetres compared to tens of metres). In the Suez rift, we're using LIDAR data to improve our understanding of how fault systems evolve through time, and how that structural evolution influences the stratigraphy and sedimentology of the strata that are deposited in the rift. To do this, we need to understand how the thickness and rock types of geological strata change across the area, with respect to the structural geology. Those variations are subtle, and we need high resolution data to map them accurately. Finally, it allows us to easily communicate our data and results to the oil companies who sponsor us, and gives us nice, clear images we can use to illustrate scientific papers and conference presentations.

Three-dimensional representation of a geological surface, derived from LIDAR-based geological mapping

This being a fairly new technology for geological mapping, it has not always been straightforward to use. For example, software for geological interpretation of LIDAR data didn't exist. So we had to create our own: my colleague Dave Hodgetts has been working on this, and the resulting software is now being spun out. And we're still trying to figure out how we can use all the data to its best advantage. But we're getting there, and I hope the first publications from this work will be coming out soon. Watch this space...