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The AAPG/Datapages Combined Publications Database

AAPG Bulletin

Abstract


Volume: 69 (1985)

Issue: 9. (September)

First Page: 1445

Last Page: 1445

Title: Mapping Paleostructures from Time-Related Aeromagnetic Lineaments and Photolineaments: ABSTRACT

Author(s): Rex M. Peterson

Article Type: Meeting abstract

Abstract:

A classification of aeromagnetic lineaments has been adapted for use with photolineaments mapped from Landsat and aerial photographs. William Dean Gibbons, a Texas geophysicist, recently defined sets of structurally high, linear, aeromagnetic anomalies for each Phanerozoic period: e.g., N19°W and N71°E for the Cambrian. Assuming that many of these aeromagnetic trends had drag-fold origins, a Cambrian model of a wrench system with drag folds and N19°W and N71°E would have the primary stress direction at N64°W, primary first-order wrench at N86°E, and complementary first-order wrench at N34°W. This model was tested on several Cambrian (Knox) oil fields in Kentucky by mapping dense sets of N34°W, N19°W, N86°E, and N71°E ineaments from aerial photographs and interpreting drag folds from the lineaments. Comparing structural contour maps on the Knox with Cambrian drag-fold maps indicates that drag-fold maps are an approximation of structural contour maps with clusters of drag folds corresponding to closed highs. Similar trials on Kentucky oil fields in the Ordovician also gave encouraging results, indicating that the method has potential in exploration. Several porosity and permeability trends were also identified from time-related lineaments for the Knox and various Ordovician reservoirs.

This procedure for mapping paleostructure has been further tested in the Mid-Continent on structures formed during various periods from the Cambrian to Cretaceous and is being used, with Landsat, for regional exploration and, with aerial photographs, for detailed studies. A current project involves exploration for Pennsylvanian and Permian paleostructures in the Denver-Julesburg basin.

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Copyright 1997 American Association of Petroleum Geologists