OVERVIEW ON PETROLEUM GEOSCIENCE

UNDERSTANDING EARTH LECTURE #1 Askury Abd Kadir

The EARTH

SURFACE FEATURES OF THE EARTH

Surface Features of the Earth

Earth Internal Structure

Earths Simple Structure:

Core Mantle Crust

The Earth has a radius of about 6371 km, although it is about 22 km larger at equator than at poles.

The Earth consists of 7 layers

EARTH DIMENSION
Radius (Av.) 6,371 km Density 5.517 g/cm3 Weight 5.98 x 1024kg Continental area (29.02%) 148x106 km2 Oceanic area (70.98%) 362x106 km2 Average continent high 823 m Average ocean depth 3,800 m Mt. Everest 8,848 m Mariana Trench 11,033 m

Dynamic Earth

Earth is an active planet in a constant state of change

The Geological Environments

Geological Processes continually modify the Earths surface, destroy old rocks, create new rocks and add to complexity of ground conditions

CYCLE OF GEOLOGY
Cycle of geology encompasses all the major processes, which must be the cyclic, or they would grind to an evitable halt.

Land Sea

: mainly erosions and rock destruction : mainly deposition, forming new sediments

Underground : new rock created and deformed

Hydrologic Cycle

Rain comes from clouds - falls on surface,

picks up sand, silt and clay, carries particles to river and into ocean.

Water then evaporates to become clouds, which move over continents to rain again

Plate tectonics
Provide the mechanism for nearly all earth movements. Plates are lithospheric plates - about 100 km thick, which move around on top of the asthenosphere. Tectonics movement and deformation of the crust

THE THEORY OF PLATE TECTONICS

Earths outmost layer is fragmented into a dozen of more large and small plates that are moving relatively to one another as they ride a top hotter, more mobile material. The present day continents were the fragmented pieces of pre-existing large masses known as supercontinent Pangaea. According to the continental drift theory, the supercontinent Pangaea began to breakup about 225 200 million years ago, eventually fragmenting into the continents as we know them today.

PLATE TECTONIC

Plate tectonics explains why earthquakes occur where they do, why volcanoes occur where they do, how mountain ranges form, as well as many other aspects of the Earth.

SURFACE FEATURES OF THE EARTH

THE EARTH CRUST CAN BE DIVIDED INTO SEVERAL MAJOR TECTONIC PLATES

NCH TRE NE IPPI PHIL

SOUTH CHINA SEA BASIN 8 1

SUNDA PLATFORM

4 2

nc tre ve i t c Ina

MINDANAO 12 8

CONVER GENCE O F PACIFIC PLATE

RA TE MA SU

KALIMANTAN

EQUATOR

11 6 9 IRIAN JAYA 5
Me lan ge

SULAWESI 10 3 4

JAWA

12

CONVERGENCE OF INDIAN - AUSTRALIAN PLATE 100 104

SUNDA TREN CH

SAHUL PLATFORM

108

112

116

120

124

132

140

144
TEK1

FAULTS AND PLATE EDGES - POST MIDDLE MIOCENE

Surface Features of the Earth

The Lithosphere & Plate Tectonics

Plate tectonics involves the formation, lateral movement, interaction, and destruction of the lithospheric plates. Much of Earth's internal heat is relieved through this process and many of Earth's large structural and topographic features are consequently formed. Continental rift valleys and vast plateaus of basalt are created at plate break up when magma ascends from the mantle to the ocean floor, forming new crust and separating midocean ridges. Plates collide and are destroyed as they descend at subduction zones to produce deep ocean trenches, strings of volcanoes, extensive transform faults, broad linear rises, and folded mountain belts.

PLATES BOUNDARIES

Convergent Divergent boundaries boundaries are are Transform boundaries areas where plates move occur when twofrom plates grind past each other with only away toward each each other other, and limited convergent forming either collide. or divergent mid oceanic activity ridges or rift valleys.

CONVERGENCE
When oceanic crust meets oceanic crust, one plate dive beneath the other. A deep trench is formed in the ocean floor along the line of convergence which is called subduction zone. The plate that descends into the hot mantle is partially melted, its lighter fractions rising through fissures in the heavier, unmelted crust above.
Source: http://web.visionlearning.com/custom/geology/over heads/EAS1.2-oh-convergent_boundaries.shtml

CONVERGENCE (CONT.)
When oceanic crust collides with a continent, the lighter continental crust overrides the ocean floor.
The descending plate melts fractionally, often producing a volcanic arc along the edge of the continent.

Source: http://web.visionlearning.com/custom/geology/over heads/EAS1.2-oh-convergent_boundaries.shtml

CONVERGENCE (CONT.)
When two continents collide, great mountain ranges such as the Alps and the Himalayas are pushed up.
Thick continental crust; instead of sliding down into the mantle, it crumples, folding and breaking into huge slabs that pile on top one another .

Source: http://web.visionlearning.com/custom/geology/over heads/EAS1.2-oh-convergent_boundaries.shtml

(a) Continent vs Continent (e.g: India vs Asia)

Convergence of the Earth Crusts

(b) Oceanic Crust vs Continental Crus (e.g: Pasific Oc. vs S.America )

(c) Oceanic Crust vs Oceanic Crust

DIVERGENCE
The region in which a rift begins to form is uplifted; after separation of the continental masses, the rift zone itself remains higher than the seafloor on either side.

The seafloor sinks as it moves away from the ridge, and the trailing edge of the continent sinks with it. Wherever the continental shelf is submerged, it becomes blanketed with layer of sediment from the land.
Source: http://www.cotf.edu/ete/modules/msese/ earthsysflr/plates3.html

TRANSFORM FAULTING
A fault is break along which two blocks of the crust slide past one another. As a consequence of relative plate motion, the ocean floor is crisscrossed with faults. Along the edge parallel to its motion, a plate slides past its neighbour with very little interaction

Source: Frank Press, Raymond Siever, Understanding Earth, Freeman, 2001

Transform Boundaries
occur where two plates slide past one another horizontally.
The San Andreas Fault, in California is a transform fault.

ROUGH CALCULATION
Distance between Lagos, Nigeria (African Plate) and Natal, Brazil (South America Plate) on the map at the moment is about 4,400km. Assuming the rate of tectonic movement @ continental drift about 4 cm/year. Please calculate the time taken to split these two continents. 4400km/(4x10-5 km/year) = 1.1x108 years or 110 million years. Proved . Dynamic earth ...

Part II

Time Scale

How Old is Our Earth

The Earth is about 4.6 billion years old, human beings have been around for only the past 2 million years.
mankind has been witness to only 0.043% of Earth history. The first multi-celled organisms appeared about 700 million years ago. Thus, organisms have only been witness to about 15% of Earth's history

How do we know?
For us to have an understanding of the earth upon which we live, we must look at processes and structures that occur today, and interpret what must have happened in the past.

First mammals (210) First reptiles (310)

First land plants (470)

First algae (1800) Oxygenated atmosphere (2400) Cyanobacteria & stromatolites (3500)

Formation of planet (4600)

Relative Ages

Stratigraphic Principles
Geologists have developed a number of principles over the past couple of hundred years for determining the relative ages of rocks. These are largely common-sense, but they are quite powerful when used carefully. Note that these principles are not laws, but rules of thumb; there can be exceptions, but much of the time, these principles work well.

Stratigraphic principles Uniformitarianism

Uniformitarianism More or less, this is the idea that processes which are happening today happened similarly in the past. So if we observe something going on today, we might expect it to have been similar 100 million years ago. The present is the key to the past.

Stratigraphic principles Original Horizontality

This principle says that sedimentary rock layers are laid down flat originally and that if you find sedimentary layers which are not flat, they have been deformed or tilted since deposition.

Stratigraphic principles Original Continiuty

Original Continuity When rock layers are deposited, they are usually not just deposited over small areas, but more regionally. So if you're sitting on one side of the Grand Canyon and you see a certain rock layer in a certain position in the stratigraphic column, you would expect that the similar-looking rock layer at the same position in the column on the other side of the Canyon is in fact the same rock layer.

Stratigraphic principles Superposition

Superposition Basically, in any undisturbed stratigraphic column, the oldest layer of rock is located at the bottom. This is pretty obvious - you can't put layer B on top of layer A if layer A isn't there yet, and it's awfully hard to slip layer A into a stratigraphic column without disturbing the column.

Stratigraphic principles Crosscutting

Cross-cutting If geologic unit A cuts through geologic unit B, then A is younger than B. For example, if a fault breaks a rock layer, the fault must be younger than the rock layer.

Stratigraphic principles Inclusion

Inclusion If layer A includes rock B, then A must be younger than B. So if there is a piece of charcoal embedded in a layer of mud, then the charcoal must be older than the mud.

Example of the usage of stratigraphic principle If all goes reasonably well, you can use these principles to determine the order in which layers were deposited and cut and folded and the like.

Gaps Happen
Note that the situation isn't always this nice; there are often gaps in your geologic record - spots where there is missing time.
For example, you can have a situation in which there is no deposition for long periods of time (for example, your column was made on a flood plain which only receives sediments every 1000 years). Also, strata can be eroded and, in some cases, completely removed by erosion - your column would then have no record of the eroded layers. Finally, layers are deformed by tectonic forces; they are folded, faulted, and the like.

Gaps Happen
When there is a gap in a stratigraphic column, strata meet at what is called an unconformity.

Connecting Outcrops

The above principles can be used to estimate the relative ages of strata in a single cliff, say at Miri, Sarawak You could use the same principles to get relative ages for strata in cliffs in Norway, South Africa, England, Japan, China, wherever.

 But can you then connect, or correlate, those different sets of relative ages into a single, coherent, worldwide stratigraphic column?
Yes, and it turns out that fossils are the markers which make it possible. Sedimentary strata often contain characteristic fossils, and sequences of strata often contain characteristic fossil successions. If you go to cliffs around the world, you can find similar fossil successions, and if the fossil successions are similar, perhaps you are looking at the same sequence of strata. These principle we call as stratigraphic correlation.

 By applying this technique to stratigraphic columns around the world, you can assemble a composite stratigraphic column which gives relative ages for layers for much of the history of the Earth.

Absolute Ages
Up until now, all we have been able to do is give relative ages: layer A is older than B, which is older than C, and so on. Nothing we've discussed above will tell us exactly how old A, B, or C are; in other words, we don't know the absolute ages of A, B, or C. We need a geological stopwatch.

Radioactivity
Decay of radioactive elements can be used as a geological stopwatch. Certain isotopes of certain elements are unstable and change spontaneously into other elements through a process called radioactive decay. This decay also releases energy in the form of radiation and is the phenomenon which makes nuclear power plants possible.

Radioactivity
Two terms:
Parent atom An unstable atom which undergoes radioactive decay to another atom. Child atom The atom which is produced when a parent atom decays.

Radioactive decay is a funny process. You won't be able to predict which uranium atom will decay at any given time; that is a random process. However, the overall population of uranium atoms decays at a steady and predictable rate.

RADIOACTIVITY
The rate of decay is often expressed in terms of half-life, which is the time it takes for half of the parent atoms to decay away to child atoms. Half-life is a constant value for any particular parent-child pair, like Uranium-238 (parent) and Lead-206 (child), but half-lives are different for different pairs, so the U-238/Pb206 half-life is different from the Potassium40/Argon-40 half-life.

RADIOMETRIC DATING
Radioactive parent nuclide Potassium 40 Rubidium 87 Uranium 235 Uranium 238 Carbon 14 K Rb U U C Stable daughter nuclide Argon 40 Strontium Lead 207 Lead 206 Nitrogen 14 Ar Sr Pb Pb N Half-life (years) 1.3 billion 47 billion 0.7 billion 4.5 billion 5730

The Geologic Time Scale

After assembling the relative time scale, and using radioactive decay to assign absolute ages to certain rock layers, geologists have developed an overall history of geologic time called the Geologic Time Scale.