Towards a digital 3D model of the main Karoo Basin, South Africa

Abstract

Summary The main focus of my PhD work is building a digital 3D framework for the main Karoo Basin, South Africa. The project aims to: 1) facilitate the visualization and assessment of the stratigraphic architecture and the regional-scale structural features contained in the basin; and 2) promote a more quantitative geodynamic assessment of the origin and evolution of the basin. The backbone of my PhD is a validated digital database, which is obtained from vintage geological data from the past 40 years, primarily based on deep boreholes that penetrate the entire fill of the main Karoo Basin. The project is already in its modelling phase and has produced some preliminary results. However when these initial outputs were evaluated, a number of the key borehole parameters (position, elevation, depths of stratigraphic units etc.) showed inconsistencies and introduced uncertainty to the preliminary 3D model. Given that these errors appear to be systematic in nature, we propose a specialist geomatics study of the data to quantitatively transform the various spatially referenced data into the modelling platform (i.e., Petrel) and account for the discrepancies in the well log parameters (i.e., model their uncertainty).