Subsidence Analysis and Visualization

This book provides a comprehensive introduction to techniques for quantitative subsidence analysis and visualization with example applications. Subsidence analysis is an essential step to understand basin evolution through geologic time and space in the study of sediments and sedimentary basins. Quantifying techniques have been developed and applied in many basin research projects to evaluate total, tectonic and thermal subsidence. They are also a pre-requisite for basin evolution modelling. Recent studies have applied visualization techniques to understand regional subsidence contexts and trends, which confirmed that three-dimensional visualization of the basin subsidence is highly helpful to gain insight into basin evolution. In this book, we show how geoscience and computer science can be effectively combined in advanced basin analysis, especially in terms of basin subsidence. Each type of subsidence analysis is introduced with example applications. In particular we present a study of the Vienna basin using BasinVis, a MATLAB-based program for analyzing and visualizing basin subsidence. Given its breadth of coverage, this book will benefit students in undergraduate and postgraduate courses and provide helpful information for research projects and industry applications.