February Geosphere media highlights

This article presents research into the Reelfoot rift within the Mississippi embayment of the central United States. The project is timely and relevant to a wide audience in light of the seismic risk and increased interest in petroleum potential within the Mississippi embayment. The northern end of the rift near the town of New Madrid, Missouri, was the site of the great 1811-1812 New Madrid earthquakes, and it remains the most seismically active area east of the Rocky Mountains. This research utilizes existing and new data sets which better define the structure and stratigraphy within the Reelfoot rift and presents them as a 3-D model for interpretation and visualization. This allows the generation of a unique picture and new understanding of the central Mississippi River Valley. Quaternary reactivation of Precambrian basement faults is of wide international interest in developing a better understanding of rift systems and their earthquake threat. Within the Mississippi embayment it is important to understand the source of the current and historic seismicity. Delineation of basement structures within the Reelfoot rift is also of interest to the petroleum industry, because the authors have mapped basement blocks that may help define petroleum targets. This work substantially improves the interpretation of the geologic history, formation, and development of the Reelfoot rift and its impact on Quaternary deformation.

Automated extraction of data from text using an XML parser: An earth science example using fossil descriptions
Gordon B. Curry et al., Digital Geosciences Laboratory, Dept of Geographical and Earth Sciences, University of Glasgow, Gregory Building, Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow G12 8QQ, Scotland, UK.

This paper describes a method of automating the computerization (digitization) of important sections of earth science information that is currently only available in printed text. At the present time, full digitizing of printed information requires manual entry of data into a database, which is slow, unrewarding, and likely to introduce mistakes. This paper demonstrates a method of automatically digitizing descriptions of fossil species, which are an immense source of information on the history of life on the planet. These descriptions are written in a very regular way, to such an extent that they can be read by computers using new software (a parser) that creates markers, or tags, around segments of text. Once tagged in this way, the information can be analyzed much more thoroughly that was previously possible. The digitized information is also much more complete than was previously available, as the entire species description is tagged, including all the features of the fossil, its stratigraphic distribution, and geographic location.

Lidar mapping of faults in Houston, Texas, USA
Richard M. Engelkemeir and Shuhab D. Khan, Department of Geosciences, University of Houston, Houston, Texas 77204-5007, USA.
Keywords: lidar, Houston, faults, subsidence