Reconstruction of eroded paleo-topography using mass balance principle.

@inproceedings{BoukareGM2012,
 abstract = { The reconstruction of eroded structures represents a crucial step in the determination of paleoenvironments and basin history. In this paper, we propose to build eroded geometry from available surface and subsurface data. The method consists in back stripping of the geological basin using simple mass balance principles. We choose to model horizons as implicit surfaces which offers an interesting way to honor such hard data efficiently. The basin is considered as an open system whose input and output sediment fluxes define boundary conditions. We assume that each system tract is composed of both new external input and old material (eroded fraction). We propose in this work a two-steps work flow.
First, a vector field qualifying the denudation rate is inferred by a morphology analysis from the paleo-topography. The geometry updating of initial systems tracts is performed by a Vector Field based Shape Deformation (VFSD) using the denudation rate vector field.
This allows to assign the eroded fraction, which may come from several underlying system tracts, to the initial sedimentary units. These two steps are performed recursively for each system tract from the youngest to the oldest one. The method is validated on synthetic subsurface analogs, and we demonstrate its applicability to natural active systems and in subsurface settings. },
 author = { Boukare, Charles Edouard AND Caumon, Guillaume AND Lave, Jerome AND Laurent, Gautier },
 booktitle = { Proc. 32nd Gocad Meeting, Nancy },
 title = { Reconstruction of eroded paleo-topography using mass balance principle. },
 year = { 2012 }
}