Petrophysical characterisation of tight sandstone gas reservoirs using nuclear magnetic resonance: a case study of the upper Paleozoic strata in the Kangning area,eastern margin of the Ordos Basin,China

Residual and movable porosity are significant parameters for characterising petrophysical properties, especially in tight reservoirs. Eight tight sandstone samples from the upper Paleozoic gas-bearing strata in the Kangning area, from the eastern margin of the Ordos Basin, were analysed using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), petrography, and porosity and permeability tests. The lithology and pore types were identified and classified using petrography and SEM. The residual and movable porosity were obtained with NMR. In addition, NMR was used to visualise pore structure and pore size distribution. The results suggest that the upper Paleozoic sandstones in the study area mainly comprise feldspathic litharenite and litharenite. The sandstone porosity and permeability are low, with means of 5.9% and 0.549 mD, respectively. Four pore types exist in the tight sandstones: residual primary pores, grain dissolution pores, micropores (clay-dominated) and microfractures. The T₂ spectra under water-saturated conditions correlate with pore size and can be used to distinguish small and large pores based on the transverse relaxation time cutoff value of 10 ms, which corresponds to a pore diameter of 0.232 μm. Small pores account for 72% of the pores in the tight sandstones. The continuous bimodal T₂ spectra suggest good connectivity between small and large pores, despite the low porosity and permeability. In this study, the movable porosity of the major tight sandstone gas reservoirs is higher than the residual porosity, which confirms the effective evaluation of movable porosity to tight sandstone reservoirs, based on NMR experiments.     

Benthic and Plankton Foraminifers in Hydrothermally Active Zones of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge (MAR)

Comparison of benthic foraminiferal assemblages from the core obtained within the Peterburgskoe ore field (Mid-Atlantic Ridge) and from the core taken five kilometers away from the ore field revealed evident differences in their composition, in the appearance of their shells, and also in the benthic–plankton species ratio. It was noted that the foraminiferal assemblage from the ore-bearing sediments of the Petersburg field was characterized by a higher relative content of benthic species and a large number of chemically altered and broken shells. The first occurrence of the species Osangularia umbonifera, which is able to exist in lowoxygen and CaCO₃-undersaturated bottom waters at the boundary of biogenic sediments surrounding the ore field and in the ore-bearing sediments, was established. In the core section sampled beyond the ore field, the composition of foraminiferal assemblages differs insignificantly from typical oceanic ones.     

Livestock productivity as indicator of vulnerability to climate hazards: a Mongolian case study

Mongolia is subject to regular peaks of livestock winter mortality called dzuds. Several kinds of dzud exist and the ‘white dzud’, characterized by heavy stochastic snowfalls preventing livestock to access forage, is considered the most common. Droughts and high livestock densities are thought to be part of the dzud process by affecting body condition, which increases vulnerability to snowfalls. Guided by the equilibrium/nonequilibrium framework, we studied how rainfall, animal numbers and pasture health (defined as the integrity of ecological processes sustaining grass growth) impact livestock body condition in a case study of West Mongolia. We studied this parameter through livestock productivity (LP) as a proxy, defined as the annual number of newborns per breeding-age female. We found no significant impact of rainfall or livestock numbers, alone or combined. We found through the study of pasture use, defined as the ratio forage consumed/forage available, an impact of the combined effect of rainfall, animal numbers and pasture health. We observed in addition sharp LP decreases prior to dzuds, which suggests that the above-mentioned drivers interact to weaken livestock which increases its vulnerability to winter hazards. This tends to show that in our case study, dzuds are not the simple consequence of stochastic hazards striking randomly, but instead, the final stage of a chain of events that involves dry years, high livestock densities and pasture degradation. This also indicates that dzud early warning indicators could be designed based on LP monitoring.     

Insights into the petrogenesis of the West Kimberley lamproites from trace elements in olivine

The Miocene lamproites of the West Kimberley region, Western Australia include olivine-leucite lamproites (≤10 wt% MgO) containing olivine and leucite microphenocrysts, and diamondiferous olivine lamproites (20–30 wt% MgO) containing olivine phenocrysts and larger (1–10 mm) olivine as mantle xenocrysts and dunite micro-xenoliths. Olivine phenocrysts and thin (<100 μm) magmatic rims define trends of decreasing Cr and Ni, and increasing Ca and Mn, with decreasing olivine Mg#, consistent with fractional crystallisation of olivine (and minor chromite). Many phenocrysts are zoned, and those with cores of similar Mg# and trace element abundances to the mantle xenocrysts may be xenocrysts overgrown by later olivine crystallised from the lamproite magma. Magmatic olivines Mg#_91–92 are estimated to have been in equilibrium with olivine lamproite magma(s) containing ~22–24 wt% MgO. The xenocrystic mantle olivines Mg_90–92.5 in the olivine lamproites are inferred from trace element abundances to be mostly derived from garnet peridotite with equilibration temperatures estimated from the Al-in-olivine thermometer (Bussweiler et al. 2017) to be ~1000–1270 °C at depths of 115–190 km. Olivines from the deeper lithosphere are less depleted (lower Mg#, higher Na, Al, P, Ti, Zr etc) than those at shallower depths, a feature suggested to reflect the combined effects of metasomatic re-enrichment of the craton roots (Ti, Fe, Zr etc) and increasing temperature with depth of origin (Na, Al, Ca). The West Kimberley lamproite olivines are not enriched in Li, as might be expected if their source regions contained continental sedimentary material as has been previously inferred from lamproite large-ion-lithophile trace elements, and Sr and Pb isotopes.

     

Influence of the sediment delivery ratio index on the analysis of silting and break risk in the Plasencia reservoir (Central System,Spain)

The random forest method was used to generate susceptibility maps for debris flows, rock slides, and active layer detachment slides in the Donjek River area within the Yukon Alaska Highway Corridor, based on an inventory of landslides compiled by the Geological Survey of Canada in collaboration with the Yukon Geological Survey. The aim of this study is to develop data-driven landslide susceptibility models which can provide information on risk assessment to existing and planned infrastructure. The factors contributing to slope failure used in the models include slope angle, slope aspect, plan and profile curvatures, bedrock geology, surficial geology, proximity to faults, permafrost distribution, vegetation distribution, wetness index, and proximity to drainage system. A total of 83 debris flow deposits, 181 active layer detachment slides, and 104 rock slides were compiled in the landslide inventory. The samples representing the landslide free zones were randomly selected. The ratio of landslide/landslide free zones was set to 1:1 and 1:2 to examine the results of different sample ratios on the classification. Two-thirds of the samples for each landslide type were used in the classification, and the remaining 1/3 were used to evaluate the results. In addition to the classification maps, probability maps were also created, which served as the susceptibility maps for debris flows, rock slides, and active layer detachment slides. Success and prediction rate curves created to evaluate the performance of the resulting models indicate a high performance of the random forest in landslide susceptibility modelling.     

Modeling and Simulating Ground Motion from Potential Seismic Sources to Kuwait: Local and Regional Scenarios

Geotectonics - The urban development in Kuwait is growing rapidly in the past few years. Recently, a large number of new bridges, tall buildings and other infrastructures are constructed in Kuwait....     

The origins of marine and non-marine boulder deposits: a brief review

Natural Hazards - We identify 14 mechanisms, marine and non-marine, one man made, that result and could result in the formation of boulder deposits after reviewing issues associated with clast...     

The First Data of U/Pb and 40Ar/39Ar Dating of the Pre-Dzhugdzhur Volcanics: New Evidence of Time Diversity in the Formation of Individual Sectors of the Okhotsk–Chukotka Volcanogenic Belt

Doklady Earth Sciences - The first data of U/Pb and 40Ar/39Ar dating of volcanogenic rocks of the Pre-Dzhugdzhur volcano-tectonic trough (PDVT) of the Okhotsk–Chukotka volcanogenic belt...     

Spatial analysis approaches for the evaluation and protection of groundwater resources in large watersheds of the Canadian Shield

This study focuses on the development of two GIS-based approaches that are used jointly to evaluate the groundwater resources associated with granular aquifers in shield environments. The first approach is a multi-criteria analysis (MCA) using an analytical hierarchic process (AHP) based on geological and hydrogeological data for ranking the probability of finding readily available groundwater resources in a specific territory. The second approach relies on GIS-based geometric calculations that were developed for evaluating the extent and volume of aquifers. The approaches are applied on a 100?×?100 m grid in a 185,000-km² area corresponding to watersheds of the James Bay area in Quebec, Canada. The MCA-AHP approach revealed that the unconfined granular aquifers that present the highest aquifer potential (AP) are sparsely distributed and mostly associated with glaciofluvial formations such as the Harricana and Sakami moraines. The geometric calculations approach allowed for estimating that the total volume of groundwater stored in the unconfined granular aquifers reaches approximately 40 km³. When used jointly, the two approaches reveal that the shallow unconfined aquifers that require increased groundwater protection account for approximately 5% of the territory. In areas of confined granular aquifers, the highest APs are located in river valleys and lowlands. A sensitivity analysis conducted on the MCA-AHP approach revealed that the grid size does not significantly affect the results. Therefore, the approach was expanded northward, to a 490,000-km² territory reaching the Ungava Bay area. The proposed method could be adapted and applied in other shield areas.

     

Observations of Tilt Deformations in Moscow during the November 12, 2017, Earthquake at the Iran–Iraq Boundary

Doklady Earth Sciences - A residual tilt after a teleseismic earthquake is described in this work. The results of static and dynamic modeling of this event fit the measured values. The conditions...