Marine & Environmental Sciences Faculty Proceedings, Presentations, Speeches, Lectures

Russian Roulette and Coral Reefs: Towards a Quantitative Definition of Reef Frameworks

Event Name/Location

2005 Salt Lake City Annual Meeting (October 16–19, 2005)

Presentation Date

10-17-2005

Document Type

Conference Proceeding

ORCID ID

F-8807-2011

Description

Russian Roulette is a useful analogue to the Markov property inherent in the spatial patterns of coral-dominated sedimentary systems, i.e. that events define the probability of subsequent or neighboring events. Using remotely-sensed (satellite imagery, acoustic, Lidar, etc.) classification maps, we investigate the spatial patterns of coral bioherms, biostromes, and non-frameworks in different environmental and biogeographic settings. Relationships between classes encoding different facies within a scene show that coral landscapes possess a high-order and embedded Markov property, i.e. neighborhood relations are highly probabilistic despite smaller components being fractal, expressing random processes. This information allows the use of graph theory to quantitatively express spatial and genetic relationships of facies. Digraphs, and the resulting adjacency and reachability matrices, differ between biostromal and biohermal frameworks. So what? A better understanding of spatial patterns will allow a quantification of reef frameworks and associated facies by a single or few indices rather than many words, and enhance interpretation of incomplete (i.e. core) records, which will also allow better reconstruction of the entire sedimentary environment from such incomplete records with implications for the identification of potential reservoirs in reefal frameworks or other, spatially similarly operating systems.

Comments

Session No. 75
Comparative Carbonate Sedimentology I: A Tribute to the Career of R.N. Ginsburg
Salt Palace Convention Center: 151 G
8:00 AM-12:00 PM, Monday, 17 October 2005

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs, Vol. 37, No. 7, p. 183

Additional Comments

© Copyright 2005 The Geological Society of America (GSA), all rights reserved. Permission is hereby granted to the author(s) of this abstract to reproduce and distribute it freely, for noncommercial purposes. Permission is hereby granted to any individual scientist to download a single copy of this electronic file and reproduce up to 20 paper copies for noncommercial purposes advancing science and education, including classroom use, providing all reproductions include the complete content shown here, including the author information. All other forms of reproduction and/or transmittal are prohibited without written permission from GSA Copyright Permissions.

This document is currently not available here.

Share

COinS