Volume 3, Issue 4

The present survey aimed to image the subsurface structure, including karstic voids, and to evaluate the extent of the heterogeneities that can result in potentially dangerous collapse of road segments overlying these features. A multidisciplinary geophysical approach (seismic refraction, frequency domain electromagnetic and ground penetrating radar) in combination with a detailed geological survey indicated the presence of tectonic faults as well as velocity and conductivity anomalies along an old road within the area of Akrotiri at Chania (Crete). Due to the presence of subsurface fuel pipes, perpendicular to the direction of the road, 2D resistivity imaging was excluded from the applied geophysical methods. Interpretation of the geophysical data revealed that the section of the road investigated overlies prominent voids attributed mostly to karst features. The conductivity and velocity anomalies are interpreted to indicate an area where the host limestone rock has been downthrown by faulting and associated karstification. The continuation of this fault zone was observed in the slope of the road during later excavations. Interpretation, using geographic information systems (GIS) to integrate data, allowed these controls and relationships to be understood and monitored. The above methodology was proved successful for areas where the application of resistivity method is not possible.

The significance of geoarchaeological investigations is indisputable in reconstructing the former environment and in studying the relationship between humans and their surroundings. Several disciplines have developed during the last few decades to give insight into earlier time periods and their climatic conditions (e.g. palynology, malacology, archaeobotany, phytology and animal osteology). Charcoal and pollen analytical studies from the rescue excavation of the MO motorway provide information about the vegetation changes of the past. These methods are used to reconstruct the environment of the former settlements and to detect the human impact and natural climatic changes. The sites examined span the periods of the Late-Copper Age, Late-Bronze Age, Middle-Iron Age, Late-Iron Age, Sarmatian period, Late Sarmatian period, Migration period, Late-Migration period and Middle Ages. The vegetation before the Copper Age is based only on pollen analytical data. Anthracological results show the overall dominance of Quercus and a great number of Ulmus, Fraxinus, Acer, Fagus, Alnus and Populus/Salix tree fossils, as well as the residues of fruit trees present in the charred wood assemblage.

Twenty seven vertical electrical sounding (VES) profiles surrounding four known traverses were obtained in Ngor-Okpala local government area of Imo state to examine the subsurface geomaterials and the associated groundwater potential. The VES data, constrained by borehole data, provided useful information about the subsurface hydrogeologic and lithologic conditions. From the validated interpretation, the area assessed has loamy soil, medium grained sands, well-sorted medium-grained/gravelly sands and river sand as the lithologic succession from top to the bottom of the depth penetrated. The aquifers in the area were found in the medium-grained sands and well-sorted medium-coarse-grained sands. The aquifer depth for all-season groundwater that would be devoid of draw-down can be found at a depth range of 42–50 m. The resistivity maps of selected depths exhibit sharp resistivity changes at depth due mainly to undulating subsurface topography. A map of the distribution of the kσ-values shows that good quality groundwater can be found in most parts of the area.

Groundwater and soil pollution from pyrite oxidation, acid mine drainage generation, and release and transport of toxic metals are common environmental problems associated with the mining industry. Nickel is one toxic metal considered to be a key pollutant in some mining setting; to date, its formation mechanism has not yet been fully evaluated. The goals of this study are 1) to describe the process of nickel mobilization in waste dumps by introducing a novel conceptual model, and 2) to predict nickel concentration using two algorithms, namely the support vector machine (SVM) and the general regression neural network (GRNN). The results obtained from this study have shown that considerable amount of nickel concentration can be arrived into the water flow system during the oxidation of pyrite and subsequent Acid Drainage (AMD) generation. It was concluded that pyrite, water, and oxygen are the most important factors for nickel pollution generation while pH condition, SO4, HCO3, TDS, EC, Mg, Fe, Zn, and Cu are measured quantities playing significant role in nickel mobilization. SVM and GRNN have predicted nickel concentration with a high degree of accuracy. Hence, SVM and GRNN can be considered as appropriate tools for environmental risk assessment.

Sudden collapse of the Quaternary soil to form sinkholes on the order of meters and tens of meters has been a geologic phenomenon within living memory in a localized area north of Lake Chiemsee in Southeast Germany. Failing a satisfying explanation, a relation with an undefined glaciation process has always been proposed. Excavations and geophysical measurements at three newly affected sites show underground features such as prominent sandy-gravelly intrusions and extrusions typical of rock liquefaction processes well known to occur during strong earthquakes. Since strong earthquakes can reasonably be excluded to have affected the area under discussion, it has been suggested that the observed widespread liquefaction is related with the recently proposed Holocene Chiemgau meteorite impact event. Except for one earlier proposed but unassertive relation between impact and liquefaction, the obviously direct association of both processes in the Chiemgau area emphasizes that observed paleoliquefaction features need not necessarily have originated solely from paleoseismicity but can provide a recognizable regional impact signature.

A long held geologic paradigm is that mudrocks and shales are basically the product of ‘hemipelagic rain’ of silt- and/or clay-sized, detrital, biogenic and particulate organic particles onto the ocean floor over long intervals of time. However, recently published experimental and field-based studies have revealed a plethora of micro-sedimentary features that indicate these common fine-grained rocks also could have been transported and/or reworked by unidirectional currents. In this paper, we add to this growing body of knowledge by describing such features from the Paleozoic Barnett Shale in the Fort Worth Basin, Texas, U.S.A. which suggests transport and deposition was from hyperpycnal, turbidity, storm and/or contour currents, in addition to hemipelagic rain. On the basis of a variety of sedimentary textures and structures, six main sedimentary facies have been defined from four 0.3 meter intervals in a 68m (223 ft) long Barnett Shale core: massive mudstone, rhythmic mudstone, ripple and low-angle laminated mudstone, graded mudstone, clay-rich facies, and spicule-rich facies. Current-induced features of these facies include mm- to cmscale cross- and parallel-laminations, scour surfaces, clastic/biogenic particle alignment, and normal- and inverse-size grading. A spectrum of vertical facies transitions and bed types indicate deposition from waxing-waning flows rather than from steady ‘rain’ of particles to the sea floor. Detrital sponge spicule-rich facies suggests transport to the marine environment as hypopycnal or hyperpycnal flows and reversal in buoyancy by transformation from concentrated to dilute flows; alternatively the spicules could have originated by submarine slumping in front of contemporaneous shallow marine sponge reefs, and then transported basinward as turbidity current flows. The occurrence of dispersed biogenic/organic remains and inversely size graded mudstones also support a hyperpycnal and/or turbidity flow origin for a significant part of the strata. These processes and facies reported in this paper are probably present in other organic-rich shales.

An increasing number of the people responsible for promoting tourism understand the necessity of landscape conservation and sustainable development. Sustainability and the maintenance of regional identity depend on the kind of tourism that takes account of the landscape and stops short of a blind modification of it, for instance through the installation of inappropriate large-scale tourist infrastructure. Since the 1970s South Tyrol, Italy’s most northern province (Autonome Provinz Bozen/Südtirol; Provincia Autonoma di Bolzano/Alto Adige), has engaged in tourism of outstanding quality, centreed on the existing landscape potential. Until today this has been the basis for successful tourism development. In the meantime however, there have been calls in South Tyrol for a quantitative expansion, founded on the implementation of an artificial touristic infrastructure and products. As is the case in many other alpine regions, this could be detrimental to the quality of the landscape. Supported by tourism research and based on the authors’ own long-standing experience, this article analyzes the development and trends of tourism in South Tyrol from a geographical perspective and takes a critical look at the various planning prospects and the problems which might evolve for the landscape and for tourism marketing.

All gradiometers currently operating for exploration in the field are based on Lockheed Martin’s GGI gradiometer. The working of this gradiometer is described and a method for robust non linear inversion of gravity gradients is presented. The inversion method involves obtaining the gradient response of a trial body consisting of vertical rectangular prisms. The inversion adjusts the depth to the tops or bases of the prisms. In the trial model all the prisms are not required to have the same area of cross section or the same density (which can also be allowed to vary with depth). The depth to the tops and bottoms of each prism can also be different. This response is compared with the observed values of gradient and through an iterative procedure, the difference is minimized in a least square sense to arrive at a best fitting model by varying the position of the tops or bottoms of the prisms. Each gradient can be individually inverted or one or more gradients can be jointly inverted. The method is extended to invert gravity values individually or jointly with gradient values. The use of Differential Curvature, a quantity which is directly obtained by current gradiometers in use and which is an invariant under a rotation in the horizontal plane, is emphasized. Synthetic examples as well as a field example of inversion are given.

The revelation of vast global quantities of potentially productive gas and oil-prone shales has led to advancements in understanding important geological properties which impact reservoir performance. Based upon research on a variety of shales, several geological properties have been recognized as being common and important to hydrocarbon production. (1) transport/depositional processes include hemipelagic ‘rain’, hyperpycnal flows, turbidity current flows, tempestites, wave-reworking, and contour currents in both shallow and deep water settings. (2) Common shale minerals include clays, quartz, calcite, dolomite, apatite, and pyrite; organic constituents include spores (Tasmanites), plant remains, biogenic quartz and calcite, and arenaceous foraminifera. (3) Porosity and permeability are characteristically low with pore sizes ranging down to the nanoscale. Main pore types include intergranular (including pores within clay floccules), porous organic matter, porous fecal pellets, and microfractures. (4) Important geochemical characteristics include organic richness (>3%), maturity (>1.1%Ro for shale gas and 0.6–0.9% for shale oil) and type (I–IV), in addition to certain biomarkers which are indicators of bottom water oxicity during deposition. Remaining hydrocarbon potential [RHP = (S1 + S2)/TOC] also reflects temporal environmental changes. ‘Isotopic reversals’ can be used to detect best producing areas in shale-gas plays. (5) Lithofacies stacking patterns and sequence stratigraphy are the result of eustatic depositional history. A general sequence stratigraphic model is presented here that highlights this commonality. (6) Geomechanical properties are key to drilling, fracturing and production of hydrocarbons. Brittle-ductile couplets at several scales occur in shale sequences. (7) Geophysical properties, when calibrated to rock properties, provide a means of regionally to locally mapping the aforementioned properties. (8) Economic and societal considerations in the exploration and development of resource shales are garnering attention. Many potentially economic shale-gas and shale-oil plays are being identified globally. Risks and uncertainties associated with gas- and oil-rich shales include the lack of long-term production histories, environmental concerns related to hydraulic fracturing, uncertainty in calculating hydrocarbons-in-place, and fluctuations in supply, demand, and price.

Stability with first time or reactivated landslides depends upon the residual shear strength of soil. This paper describes prediction of the residual strength of soil based on index properties using two machine learning techniques. Different Artificial Neural Network (ANN) models and Support Vector Machine (SVM) techniques have been used. SVM aims at minimizing a bound on the generalization error of a model rather than at minimizing the error on the training data only. The ANN models along with their generalizations capabilities are presented here for comparisons. This study also highlights the capability of SVM model over ANN models for the prediction of the residual strength of soil. Based on different statistical parameters, the SVM model is found to be better than the developed ANN models. A model equation has been developed for prediction of the residual strength based on the SVM for practicing geotechnical engineers. Sensitivity analyses have been also performed to investigate the effects of different index properties on the residual strength of soil.