Automatic Zonation and Correlation of Well Logs for a Tectono-Sedimentary Interpretation in the Continental Siliciclastic Basin of Duero River (Iberian Peninsula)

Abstract

Abstract A procedure to automatically correlate well logs measured in boreholes that are located in continental siliciclastic basins by using two different methods is shown. The first method is applied to the parametric layers that were determined in each borehole starting from the values of their geophysical parameters and consists of correlating, by cross-association, the columns formed by these layers. The second method consists of cross-correlating the geophysical stretches or units, which are established as sets of layers with similar characteristics that are sufficiently different from the average values in the adjacent stretches. The evaluation of the correlation results requires showing the criteria that are used for determining the parametric layers that are obtained from the well logs, the result of which is called segmentation in this study. This evaluation also requires to show the techniques that are used to determine the geophysical stretches by a process that is called stretching in this study. The reason for using different correlation methods is that cross-association of layers provides high resolution but relatively smaller spatial extent, whereas cross-correlations of geophysical stretches provide higher spatial extent but lower resolution. Thus, the cross-association results have been used both to assess the correlations in boreholes that are relatively close (distances<10 km) and to support the establishment of the stretch correlation criteria. The developed methodology is applied to a set of boreholes located in the Duero Basin (Spain). From the results obtained, an evaluation of the correlations with respect to the distances between boreholes was carried out. Furthermore, it is shown that the correlations between geophysical stretches enable identifying the correspondences between these and the tectono-sedimentary sequences (activation-relaxation of a tectonic phase) that are established in the literature.