Introduction to special section: Building complex and realistic geological models from sparse data

Abstract

Earth scientists have always created spatial models of the subsurface. Before the dawn of computer-based modeling, earth models were simply drawn by hand on a piece of paper as cross section or plan views, sometimes utilizing the techniques of descriptive geometry. These hand-draw models are quick and easy to create; this is why we are still doing them on white boards, note books and sometimes even on napkins. They communicate ideas very well, but they are subjective and rarely constrained by data in a measurable way. As the number of observations grew with the advancement of data collections technologies, the possibility to use mathematical algorithms to do the modeling became a reality. These processes, first applied in 2D then in 3D, removed some of the subjectivity from the modeling. These processes work very well when the data density is high enough, meaning that models built with different mathematical methods are both realistic and similar one to another.