ALBERT

Description / Table of Contents: Ziel des acatech Projektes "Georessource Wasser - Herausforderung Globaler Wandel" ist es, innovative Beiträge für die nachhaltige Bewirtschaftung von Wasserressourcen unter den Bedingungen des Globalen Wandels zu erarbeiten und den Wissenstransfer zwischen Wissenschaft, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft zu unterstützen. Der räumliche Fokus des Projektes liegt einerseits auf sensitiven Regionen in Deutschland, das heißt Gebieten, in denen Probleme im Wassersektor bestehen oder absehbar sind und andererseits wird die globale Verflechtung Deutschlands betrachtet. Zentrales Ergebnis des Projektes sind an verschiedene Zielgruppen - Wissenschaft, Wissenschaftspolitik, Wirtschaft, Politik und allgemeine Öffentlichkeit - gerichtete Empfehlungen.

Description / Table of Contents: PREFACE The aim of this volume is two-fold. At the more pragmatic level, it is to help answer the many questions about the structure of the Pacific continental margin of North America, which have arisen over the years as a result of continuing field mapping and geophysical surveys. The second objective is methodological - to illustrate the irreplaceable role of geological information among the various data sets used in earth-science studies. The need to address these issues became apparent to the author during the several years he spent taking part in geological and geophysical studies on the west coast of Canada. All too often, results of geologic field mapping disagreed with tectonic predictions from too-straightforward local applications of global plate reconstructions, which due to their generality do not always take a full account of specific character of particular regions. To be sure, the global approach has during the last q~/artercentury greatly expanded the vision of geoscientists, previously restricted to continental regions. However, a negative by-product of this expansion has been a decline of attention paid to local information, as tectonic studies have increasingly relied on simply fitting the development of a particular region into this or that prefabricated tectonic template. Direct geological observations have limitations of their own. The observer in most cases deals with products of geologic processes, rather than with the processes themselves. Field mapping provides local information, and many years of effort are needed before a regional overview becomes possible. Geologic mapping is restricted to the ground surface, and even the deepest drillholes cannot sample more than the outermost shell of the Earth. The factual side of geologic mapping is usually limited to determination of rock types and their relationships in areas of exposure. Conclusions about the three-dimensional structure of a region and its evolution are still mostly inferential. Broad incorporation into geological studies of geophysical data, assisted by ever-more-sophisticated modern computers, provides a huge volume of information unobtainable in other ways. Geophysical methods quickly afford regional coverage or images of the Earth's deep interior. Geophysical methods have prompted the application in geological sciences of methodologies borrowed from exact sciences, such as mathematics and physics. Particularly important has been quantitative modeling, which allows a scientist to use the known parameters of a system to predict others. But in taking this approach too far, one encounters a dangerous pitfall. A model is a simplified representation of a natural phenomenon. The quality of this or that representation is relative, and a representation is never perfect. To incorporate all characteristics of a geologic phenomenon, in a parametrized form, into a numerical or physical imitation is impossible. This requires one to rely on simplifying assumptions, and a model is no better than the assumptions at its base. Unrealistic assumptions lead to unrealistic models. When a disagreement arises between model predictions and observations - such as those from geologic field mapping - a modeler may be tempted to downplay the differences or the significance of the offending observations. It becomes tempting to underestimate the role of an experienced geologist as a principal arbiter of the realism of a model. But it is geological data and geological control that provide the ultimate means of testing abstract models. From this methodological position, the present study of the western North American continental margin is organized as follows: 1. Geological information, available from field mapping and drilling, is gathered and summarized. 2. Current geophysical models for this region are considered, with particular attention to their underlying assumptions. 3. The available data, geological and geophysical, are synthesized into an internally consistent geologic-evolution concept. 4. This concept is tested by comparison with direct geological observations from field mapping and drilling. Because most current data sets and models cover northwestern Washington and western British Columbia, particular attention was paid to these areas. Fortunately, these areas contain many keys that help understand the structure of the entire western North American continental margin, which has baffled scientists for decades. The author does not claim to have resolved all these problems, but he does believe he has made a useful contribution to understanding continental-oceanic plate interrelations at this continental margin. Rigidity of lithospheric plates is a critical assumption in current models of plate evolution. The lithophere of a plate is created at spreading centers manifested in the global system of mid-ocean ridges. It moves away from the place of its birth towards boundaries with other plates, with which it can interact in a variety of ways. Some interactions are of strike-slip type, with two plates simply sliding past each other. However, to compensate for the creation of new lithosphere at spreading centers, older lithosphere at some plate boundaries descends into the mantle as it is overriden by other plates. At such plate boundaries lie subduction zones. If both regimes occur along a single plate boundary, the transition between them must be abrupt. Unless it can be tied to a change in orientation of the boundary, it must be associated with a junction of not two, but three different plates. Such a template was used to interpret the structure and tectonic evolution of the western North American continental margin in the late 1960s and thereafter (Atwater, 1970; McManus et al., 1972; Barr and Chase, 1974; Riddihough and Hyndman, 1976). To satisfy the principles of rigid-plate tectonics, both regimes have to exist along this continental margin. Also needed in rigid-plate reconstructions is a plate triple junction somewhere between the areas of proven ongoing subduction (in Oregon and southern Washington) and transform plate motion (along the southeastern Alaska margin; Atwater, 1970; McManus et al., 1972). Such a triple junction has been placed off Queen Charlotte Sound offshore British Columbia (Keen and Hyndman, 1979; Riddihough et al., 1983), where a spreading center has been postulated between the Pacific and Explorer oceanic plates (Hyndman et al. 1979; Riddihough, 1984). Off northern Vancouver Island, a transform boundary between the Explorer and Juan de Fuca oceanic plates has been postulated, but both these plates are assumed to be subducting beneath Vancouver Island (Hyndman et al., 1979; Riddihough and Hyndman, 1989)o With the assumed universality of the rigid-plate model, "broad similarity" has been suggested between the geology of western Oregon and that of western British Columbia, and the Cascadia zone of active subduction has been extended as far north as the mouth of Queen Charlotte Sound (Riddihough, 1979, 1984). An accretionary sedimentary prism (Yorath, 1980) - or even an accretionary complex containing several exotic "terranes" (Davis and Hyndman, 1989) - has been postulated off Vancouver Island. Geological observations onshore and offshore (Shouldice, 1971; Tiffin et al., 1972) have come to be considered too "surficial" to be of major consequence for large-scale tectonic modeling (Yorath et al., 1985a,b; Yorath, 1987). Variants of the principal geophysical model for this area during the last decade (Clowes et al., 1987; Hyndman et alo, 1990; Spence et al. 1991; Yuan et al., 1992; Dehler and Clowes, 1992) have become increasingly distant from geological observations. As new model variants emerged, they were checked for internal consistency, compatibility with neighboring local models and fidelity to the overall assumed tectonic picture. However, detailed geological work continued, and many of its results proved incompatible with the conventional wisdom (Gehrels, 1990; Babcock et al., 1992, 1994; Allan et al., 1993; Lyatsky, 1993a). Importantly, questions arose about the applicability in this region of the conventional, simple rigid-plate assumption, as it was shown to be unable to account for all the geological and geophysical peculiarities in some areas (Carbotte et al., 1989; Allan et al., 1993; Davis and Currie, 1993). New solutions were made necessary by new findings and by rediscovery of forgotten old data (see Lyatsky et al., 1991; Lyatsky, 1993b). Without aiming to resolve all the outstanding debates, tectonic implications of the geologic mapping and drilling results in this region are considered in the following chapters. These results are integrated with geochemical and geophysical data. Interpretations of these data, made by this author and by other workers, are verified by geological observations and by geologically plausible extrapolations from these observations. In searching for solutions consistent with all the information, the author has restricted himself to analyzing continental-crust structures along this continental margin. He believes, however, that future models for the offshore regions of the northeastern Pacific should consider the results obtained herein.

Description / Table of Contents: The subject of the book is an indepth description of the theory and mathematical models behind the application of the Global Positioning System in geodesy and geodynamics. The text has been prepared by leading experts in the field, contributing their particular points of view. Unlike a collection of disjoint papers, the text provides a continous flow of ideas and developments. The mathematical models for GPS measurements are developed in the first half of the book, followed by the description of GPS solutions for geodetic applications on local, regional and global scales.

Description / Table of Contents: PREFACE Through the last few decades inversion concepts have become an integral past of experimental data interpretation in several branches of science. In numerous cases similar inversion-like techniques were developed independently in separate disciplines, sometimes based on different lines of reasoning, and sometimes not to the same level of sophistication. This fact was realized early in inversion history. In the seventies and eighties "generalized inversion" and "total inversion" became buzz words in Earth Science, and some even saw inversion as the panacea that would eventually raise all experimental science into a common optimal frame. It is true that a broad awareness of the generality of inversion methods is established by now. On the other hand, the volume of experimental data varies greatly among disciplines, as does the degree of nonlinearity and numerical load of forward calculations, the amount and accuracy of a priori information, and the criticality of correct error propagation analysis. Thus, some clear differences in terminology, philosophy and numerical implementation remain, some of them for good reasons, but some of them simply due to tradition and lack of interdisciplinary communication. In a sense the development of inversion methods could be viewed as an evolution process where it is important that "species" can arise and adapt through isolation, but where it is equally important that they compete and mate afterwards through interdisciplinary exchange of ideas. This book was actually initiated as a proceedings volume of the "Interdisciplinary Inversion Conference 1995", held at the University of Aarhus, Denmark. The aim of this conference was to further the competition and mating part of above-mentioned evolution process, and we decided to extend the effect through this publication of 35 selected contributions. The point of departure is a story about geophysics and astronomy, in which the classical methods of Backus and Gilbert from around 1970 have been picked up by helioseismology. Professor Douglas Gough, who is a pioneer in this field, is the right person to tell this success story of interdisciplinary exchange of research experience and techniques [1-31] (numbers refer to pages in this book). Practitioners of helioseismology like to stress the fact that the seismological coverage on the Sun in a sense is much more complete and accurate than it is on Earth. Indeed we witness vigorous developments in the Backus & Gilbert methods (termed MOLA/SOLA in the helioseismology literature) [32-59] driven by this fortunate data situation. Time may have come for geophysicists to look into helioseismology for new ideas. Seismic methods play a key role in the study of the Earth's lithosphere. The contributions in [79 - 130,139 - 150] relate to reflection seismic oil exploration, while methods for exploration of the whole crust and the underlying mantle axe presented in [131 - 138, 151 - 166]. Two contributions [167 - 185] present the application of inversion for the understanding of the origin of petroleum and the prediction of its migration in sedimentary basins. Inversion is applied to hydrogeophysical and environmental problems [186 - 222], where again developments are driven by the advent of new, mainly electromagnetic, experimental techniques. The role of inversion in electromagnetic investigations of the lithosphere/astenosphere system as well as the ionosphere axe exemplified in [223 - 238]. Geodesy has a fine tradition of sophisticated linear inversion of large, accurate sets of potential field data. This leads naturally to the fundamental study of continuous versus discrete inverse formulations found in [262-275]. Applications of inversion to geodetic satellite data are found in [239 - 261]. General mathematical and computational aspects are mainly found in [262 - 336]. Nonlinearity in weakly nonlinear problems may be coped with by careful modification of lineaxized methods [295 - 302]. Strongly nonlinear problems call for Monte Carlo methods, where the cooling scedule in simulated annealing [303 - 311,139 - 150] is critical for convergence to a useful (local) minimum, and the set of consistent models is explored through importance sampling [89 - 90]. The use of prior information, directly or indirectly, is a key issue in most contributions, ranging from Bayesian formulations based a priori covariances e.g. [98 - 112,122 - 130, 254 - 261], over more general but also less tractable prior probability densities [79 - 97], to inclusion of specific prior knowledge of shape [284 - 294, 312 - 319]. Given the differences and similarities in approach, can we benefit from exchange of ideas and experience? In practice ideas and experience seldom jump across discipline boundaries by themselves. Normally one must go and get them the hard way, for instance by reading and understanding papers from disciplines far from the home ground. Look at the journey into the interdisciplinary cross-field of inversion techniques as a demanding safari into an enormous hunting ground. This book is meant to provide a convenient starting point.

Description / Table of Contents: PREFACE The objective of this book is to introduce the practitioner as well as the more theoretically interested reader into the integration problem of spatial information for Geo-lnformation Syslems. Former Get-Information Systems are restricted to 2D space. They realize the integration of spatial information by a conversion of vector and raster representations. This, however. leads to conceptual difficulties because of the two totally different paradigms. Furthermore, the internal topology of the get-objects is not considered. In recent years the processing of 3D information has played a growing role in Get-Information Systems. For example, planning processes for environmental protection or city planning are dependent on 3D data. The integration of spatial reformation will become even more impoaant in the 3D context and with the development of a new generation of open GISs. This book is intended to respond to some of these requirements. It presents a model for the integration of spatial information for 3D Geo-lnformation Systems (3D-GISs). As a precondition for the integration of spatial information, the integration of different spatial representations is emphasized. The model is based on a three-level notion of space that likewise includes the geometry, metrics and the topology of get-objects. The so called extended complex (e-complex) is introduced as a kernel of the model. Its internal basic geometries are the point, the line, the triangle and the tetrahedron. It is shown how a convex e-complex (ce-complex) is generated by the construction of the convex hull and the "'filling" of lines, triangles and tetrahedra, respectively. As we know from computer geometry, this results in substantially simpler geometric algorithms. Additionally, the algorithms gain by the explicit utilization of the topology of the ce-complex. This book also builds a bridge from the GIS to the object-oriented database technology, which will likely become a key technology for the development of a new generation of open Geo-lnformation Systems. In the so-called GEtmodel kernel "building blocks" are introduced that s~mplify the development of software architectures for geo-applications. A geological application in the Lower Rhine Basin shows the practical use of the introduced geometric and topological representation for a 3D-GIS...

Description / Table of Contents: PREFACE The four-year period of activity of the Groupement de Recherche 942 (GDR) of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) came to an end in December 1993. This GDR was a scientific association grouping research teams from the academic sphere -- i.e. the Unités de Recherches Associées 723 & 724 of the CNRS as well as the Universities of Orléans and Paris-Sud -- and from the industrial world: Elf-Aquitaine Production, TOTAL and the Institut Français du Pétrole (IFP). The aim of the GDR was to understand the processes and the causes of organic carbon fossilization in sediments, especially when they can be modified by environmental conditions such as climate, eustatism, productivity etc., factors which can alko interact. This goal implies the simultaneous study of ancient geological formations (hydrocarbon source rocks from the famous Kimmeridge Clay Formation) and recent Quaternary sediments (the Lac du Bouchet or lake Bouchet maar, Massif Central, France). In the latter case, we benefit from a fine-scale stratigraphical framework as well as a reliable reconstruction of the local and regional environment. This volume is a collection of papers representing oral presentations given on December 7, 1993, at the Société Géologique de France in Paris, during the final meeting of the GDR. These articles thus report the latest developments of the studies carried out under the GDR. However, this is not the first publication of our results, which can be found in the papers referred to in each article. The Kimmeridge Clay Formation was previously studied in 1987, by the Yorkim Group from IFP, Elf-Aquitaine and the British Geological Survey, on the basis of a series of wells drilled across the Cleveland Basin of Yorkshire. In each well, the distribution with depth of the total organic content is cyclic. We have compared some of the organic cycles from two wells (Matron and Ebberston) based on mineralogy, organic and inorganic geochemistry and petrography, at a high resolution scale (centimetric). The main conclusion of this work is that the driving force for organic matter accumulation in the studied cycles was organic phytoplankton productivity. Oxygenation conditions seem to have played a secondary role as a positive feedback action enhancing organic matter storage. Lac du Bouchet is located on the Devès volcanic plateau, 15 km SW of Le Puy en Velay, at an altitude of 1205 m. The depth of the water column is 28 m. The lake has a subcircular shape (1 km in diameter) and a very restricted watershed. This site is exceptionally suitable for research on climate variations and palaeomagnetic field modifications (Euromaars EC Program). The GDR focused on sedimentary organic matter and its relationship to inorganic phases. An important result is that organic matter appears to be a good indicator of palaeoenvironmental reconstructions for over 350 000 years. In addition, the study of early diagenetic reactions in surficial sediments (porewater and solid phase) allows the specification of the processes of organic matter degradation and storage in such an oligothrophic lake.