Glossary - 3-D Characterization

Glossary - 3-D Characterization of the House Creek Oil Field

Authigenic: Generated or formed in place. Specifically used with rock minerals and other constituents that were derived locally, and of minerals that precipitated at the same time, or subsequent, to the rock in which they are found.
ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange): A standard format for storing and transmitting data. American Standard Code for Information Interchange. A set of binary numbers that represent the alphabet, punctuation, numbers, and symbols that are used for text and communication protocols.
Binary: A file format consisting of machine-readable executable code or binary data, as opposed to ASCII text files.
BinHex: A file conversion format that converts binary files to ASCII text files.
Biostratigraphy: Ages, differentiation, and correlation of rock intervals based on the study of contained fossils.
Bioturbated: Sediment that has been extensively reworked by worms, crustaceans, or other organisms. Burrows and other evidence of reworking are commonly minor due to the biologic activity.
Bug: Commonly indicates a software or other computer-based error.
Case sensitive: Refers to upper and lower case letters. UNIX is case sensitive, meaning that names of document links and file names must be identical. A program accessing "Cat.GIF" would not find the same file were it named "cat.GIF."
Concretion: A hard round, oval, or other-shaped of mass of mineral or aggregate matter of varying sizes. Commonly forms by chemical precipitation around a nucleus or center, or replacement of precursor organic or inorganic material. An example is siderite (iron, calcium carbonate) concretions.
Detrital: Formed from detritus of preexisting rock. This is particularly for rocks, minerals, and sediments composed of precursor components.
Diachronous: A single rock unit that exhibits varying ages in different areas. A sedimentary formation, such as marine sands, that formed during transgression or regression of the shoreline, being progressively younger in the direction that the sea level is moving.
Diagenesis: Changes that influence sediments after deposition. These include compaction, cementation, and chemical alteration, dissolution, and precipitation of constituents. Excluded are surficial weathering, and metamorphism of preexisting sediments.
Dissolution: A void space or cavity in or between rocks that resulted from solution of part of the rock material.
Document window: Scrollable Mosaic or other WWW browser windows in which documents, slide shows, and movies are viewed.
File Transfer Protocol (FTP): File Transfer Protocol is commonly used to transfer files from one computer platform to another.
Flow unit: In petroleum geology, reservoir zones that exhibit similar fluid flow, porosity/permeability, reservoir potential, and production characteristics. The flow-unit definition includes a "volume of rock subdivided according to geological and petrophysical properties that influence the flow of fluids through it" (Ebanks, 1987).
Folder: Directory, sub-directory, and folder are used interchangeably to show addresses of files on this CD-ROM.
Framboid: A microscopic aggregate of pyrite crystals; these are often in spheroidal clusters, the form of which resembles raspberries.
FTP (File Transfer Protocol): File Transfer Protocol is commonly used to transfer files from one computer platform to another.
GIF (Graphics Interchange Format): GIF is a graphics file, commonly with the .gif or .GIF ending. The acronym refers to the Graphics Interchange format developed by CompuServe, Inc. This graphics format is used on numerous computer platforms and systems. GIF files can be for inline and movie images.
Heterogeneity: The state or quality of being nonuniform, having dissimilar elements, not homogeneous. For example, a unit composed of interbedded thin- and thick-bedded sandstones and mudstones is heterogeneous.
Home page: The initial screen or graphic image in which links to related information are listed. A document that the user specifies for Mosaic or other network browsing software to display, commonly when the Mosaic program is started.
HTML (Hypertext Markup Language): Acronym for Hypertext Markup Language. HTML files on this CD ROM follow the 8.3 PC/DOS format. This file, for example, is named glossary.htm.
Image: Refers to still image data. Subtypes recognized by graphics programs include JPEG, GIF, RGB, TAR, TIFF, X-PICT (PICT), X-XBM (X bitmap image), and other formats.
JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group): Acronym for Joint Photographic Experts Group, an image-compression format used to transfer color images over computer networks.
Laminar bedding: 1) Finest stratification of shale or fine-grained sandstone bedding, 2) thin alternating layers of differing composition, and 3) laminae, such as in shale, that can be split into thin layers.
Laramide orogeny: A time of regional deformation, commonly recorded across the eastern Rocky Mountains of the United States. Orogenic phases extended from Late Cretaceous until the end of Paleocene or Eocene time. To simplify, this was a period of mountain building and emplacement of igneous intrusives and mineral ore deposits.
Meniscal: The curved upper surface of a nonturbulent liquid in a container. A crescent-shaped body. A concavo-convex lens.
Minus-cement porosity: The percent volume of void space in a rock, added with volume of cements and other post-depositional pore-filling compounds. This is used as an estimate of porosity during the time of deposition of the rock.
Mosaic: A World Wide Web (WWW) multimedia browser developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Versions are available for the Mac, PC, PC Windows, and X Windows.
MOV: File type of a single-forked stand-alone QuickTime movie. The hporperf.MOV movie located in the movie directory of this CD ROM, for example, is designed to run on Macintosh and PC/Windows platforms.
MPG, MPEG, CMPEG: Moving Pictures Expert Group movie file type used primarily for PC/DOS and UNIX platforms. Special viewing applications are required to run MPG movies on your computer.
NCSA: National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
Overgrowth: Secondary material precipitated around a crystal grain of the same composition. Both grain and cement are in optical and crystallographic continuity.
Paragenesis: A sequential order of rock alteration, such as, compaction, precipitation of minerals, dissolution of grains and cements, and similar processes.
Permeability: The capacity or ability of a porous medium, such as rock or soil, to transmit fluid; the rate of diffusion of a fluid under unequal pressure. The common unit of measure is the millidarcy (mD).
Planar bedded: Lying or arranged in approximately parallel planes. Bedding in which the lower surface is a beveled erosional contact; cross bedding is characterized by planar foreset beds.
Poikilotopic: A fabric of recrystalized carbonate cements or rocks. Constituent crystals are varying sizes and commonly enclose smaller crystals of other minerals.
Porosity: The percentage of bulk volume of a rock or other object that is occupied by void space, whether isolated or connected. Porosity is further subdivided into effective (or connected) pores, primary, secondary, and minus-cement categories. Primary porosity includes all depositional pore spaces; secondary porosity records the volume of void space resulting from dissolution and (or) fracturing of the rock or sediment. Minus-cement porosity category combines intergranular primary porosity and secondary porosity, in addition to authigenic cements and clays, as an estimate of the amount of porosity at the time of lithification; porosity resulting from intragranular dissolution is excluded
QuickTime: A digital video standard developed by Apple Computer for PC/Windows and Apple computers. The QuickTime extension file is inserted into the Apple System Folder, and special viewing applications are required to view QuickTime "movies."
Range: 1) Any series of contiguous townships of the U.S. Public Land Survey system. These are aligned parallel to a principal meridian and numbered consecutively in an east-west direction from the meridian. 2) mountain range. 3) The numerical difference between a series highest and lowest values. 4) stratigraphic range. 5) A geographic area over which an organism or group of organisms is located.
Ravinement: A break in sedimentation resulting primarily from erosion. An example is a disconformity resulting from marine transgression and erosion of precursor sediments. Formation of a gully or ravine.
Radiometry: Methods of calculating an age for geologic materials by measuring the amounts of short-half-life radioactive elements, such as carbon-14, or of long-half-life radioactive elements plus their decay products, such as potassium-40/argon-40.
Regression: (Simply) The local or widespread retreat of seas from land surfaces and resulting changes in erosion and depositional patterns of strata.
SEA (Self-Extracting Archive): Self-extracting archive (SEA). These compressed files contain one or more files and (or) programs. SEA s are generally decompressed by double-clicking on the name or icon. Further instructions are given during the decompression process.
Secondary porosity: Porosity developed in a rock subsequent to its emplacement or deposition. Processes are mostly dissolution of grains, cements, and other constituents due to changes in pressure and (or) pore-fluid composition.
Section: 1) One of the 36 units that subdivides a township. It is a piece of land that is generally one mile square. 2) An exposed vertical or inclined surface, such as a cliff or quarry face. 3) geologic term used for a columnar section, type section or thin section.
.sit: This ending on a file type indicates it has been compressed with Stuffit software. Stuffit Expander is used by Mosaic to decompress the file.
TGA (TARGA): TARGA image file format; this commonly has a .tga or .TGA ending.
TIFF (Tagged Image File Format): Acronym for Tagged Image File Format, a graphic file format developed by Aldus and Microsoft. TIFF is used as an image transfer format on computer networks.
Transgression: (Simply) The advance or spread of seas over land surfaces which cause changes in erosion and depositional patterns of marine and non-marine strata.
Tabular cross bedding: Cross-bedded units that are bounded by planar, essentially parallel, surfaces to form tabular sandstone bodies.
Township: A unit of survey of the U.S. Public Land Survey. It is an area bounded on the east and west by meridians located about 6 miles apart. A township is normally a square that is subdivided into 36 sections, each of which are approximately 1 mile square. Township, range, and section locations are shown on most topographic maps, for example.
Trough cross bedding: Cross-bedding in which the lower surfaces are curved erosional contacts which result from scour and subsequent deposition.
URL (Uniform Resource Locator): The acronym stands for Uniform Resource Locator, the addressing standard on the WWW. The URL contains information about the location, method of access, and path of files to be viewed.
World Wide Web (WWW): The hypermedia document network system, abbreviated as WWW. WWW can be accessed over the Internet using Web browser software, such as Mosaic or Netscape.