Exploration for energy and mineral sources
Over the past century, industries have developed rapidly, populations have grown dramatically, and standards of living have improved, resulting in an ever-growing demand for energy and mineral resources. Geologists and geophysicists have led the exploration for fossil fuels (coal, oil, natural gas, etc.) and concentrations of geothermal energy, for which applications have grown in recent years. They also have played a major role in locating deposits of commercially valuable minerals.
Coal
The Industrial Revolution of the late 18th and 19th centuries was fueled by coal. Though it has been supplanted by oil and natural gas as the primary source of energy in most modern industrial nations, coal nonetheless remains an important fuel.
The U.S. Geological Survey has estimated that only about 2 percent of the world’s minable coal has so far been exploited; known reserves should last for at least 300 to 400 years. Moreover, new coal basins continue to be found, as, for example, the lignite basin discovered in the mid-1980s in Rājasthān in northwestern India.
Coal-exploration geologists have found that coal was formed in two different tectonic settings: (1) swampy marine deltas on stable continental margins, and (2) swampy freshwater lakes in graben (long, narrow troughs between two parallel normal faults) on continental crust. Knowing this and the types of sedimentary rock formations that commonly include coal, geologists can quite readily locate coal-bearing areas. Their main concern, therefore, is the quality of the coal and the thickness of the coal bed or seam. Such information can be derived from samples obtained by drilling into the rock formation in which the coal occurs.
Oil and natural gas
During the last half of the 20th century, the consumption of petroleum products increased sharply. This led to a depletion of many existing oil fields, notably in the United States, and intensive efforts to find new deposits.
Crude oil and natural gas in commercial quantities are generally found in sedimentary rocks along rifted continental margins and in intracontinental basins. Such environments exhibit the particular combination of geologic conditions and rock types and structures conducive to the formation and accumulation of liquid and gaseous hydrocarbons. They contain suitable source rocks (organically rich sedimentary rocks such as black shale), reservoir rocks (those of high porosity and permeability capable of holding the oil and gas that migrate into them), and overlying impermeable rocks that prevent the further upward movement of the fluids. These so-called cap rocks form petroleum traps, which may be either structural or stratigraphic depending on whether they were produced by crustal deformation or original sedimentation patterns.
Petroleum geologists concentrate their search for oil deposits in such geologic settings, mapping both the surface and subsurface features of a promising area in great detail. Geologic surface maps show subcropping sedimentary rocks and features associated with structural traps such as ridges formed by anticlines during the early stages of folding and lineations produced by fault ruptures. Maps of this kind may be based on direct observation or may be constructed with photographs taken from aircraft and Earth-orbiting satellites, particularly of terrain in remote areas. Subsurface maps reveal possible hidden underground structures and lateral variations in sedimentary rock bodies that might form a petroleum trap. The presence of such features can be detected by various means, including gravity measurements, seismic methods, and the analysis of borehole samples from exploratory drilling. (For a description of these techniques, see Earth exploration.)
Another method used by petroleum geologists in exploratory areas involves the sampling of surface waters from swamps, streams, or lakes. The water samples are analyzed for traces of hydrocarbons, the presence of which would indicate seepage from a subsurface petroleum trap. This geochemical technique, along with seismic profiling, is often used to search for offshore petroleum accumulations.
Once an oil deposit has actually been located and well drilling is under way, petroleum geologists can determine from core samples the depth and thickness of the reservoir rock as well as its porosity and permeability. Such information enables them to estimate the quantity of the oil present and the ease with which it can be recovered.
Although only about 15 percent of the world’s oil has been exploited, petroleum geologists estimate that at the present rate of demand the supply of recoverable oil will last no more than 100 years. Because of this rapid depletion of conventional oil sources, economic geologists have explored oil shales and tar sands as potential supplementary petroleum resources. Extracting oil from these substances is, however, very expensive and energy-intensive. In addition, the extraction process (mining and chemical treatment) poses environmental challenges, especially in regions where it occurs. Even so, oil shales and tar sands are abundant, and advances in recovery technology may yet make them attractive alternative energy resources.
Geothermal energy
Another alternate energy resource is the heat from the Earth’s interior. The surface expression of this energy is manifested in volcanoes, fumaroles, steam geysers, hot springs, and boiling mud pools. Global heat-flow maps constructed from geophysical data show that the zones of highest heat flow occur along the active plate boundaries. There is, in effect, a close association between geothermal energy sources and volcanically active regions.
A variety of applications have been developed for geothermal energy. For example, public buildings, residential dwellings, and greenhouses in such areas as Reykjavík, Iceland, are heated with water pumped from hot springs and geothermal wells. Hot water from such sources also is used for heating soil to increase crop production (e.g., in Oregon) and for seasoning lumber (e.g., in parts of New Zealand). The most significant application of geothermal energy, however, is the generation of electricity. The first geothermal power station began operation in Larderello, Italy, in the early 1900s. Since then similar facilities have been built in various countries, including Iceland, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Turkey, the Tibet Autonomous Region of China, and the United States. In most cases turbines are driven with steam separated from superheated water tapped from underground geothermal reservoirs and geysers.
Mineral deposits
As mentioned above, the distribution of commercially significant mineral deposits, the economic factors associated with their recovery, and the estimates of available reserves constitute the basic concerns of economic geologists. Because continued industrial development is heavily dependent on mineral resources, their work is crucial to modern society.
It has long been known that certain periods of Earth history were especially favourable for the concentration of specific types of minerals. Copper, zinc, nickel, and gold are important in Archean rocks; magnetite and hematite are concentrated in early Proterozoic banded-iron formations; and there are economic Proterozoic uranium reserves in conglomerates. These mineral deposits and a variety of others that developed throughout the Phanerozoic Eon can be related to specific types of plate-tectonic environments. Among the latter are copper, lead, and zinc in intracontinental rifts. An interesting discovery has been the remarkable concentrations of gold, iron, zinc, and copper in brine pools and sulfide-rich muds in the Red Sea and in the Salton Sea in southern California. In many countries copper, nickel, and chromium deposits occur in ophiolite complexes obducted onto the continents from the ocean floor; porphyry copper and molybdenum deposits are found in association with granodioritic intrusions; and tungsten and tin deposits occur in many granites. The correlation of these associations and distributions with periods of Earth history, on the one hand, and plate-tectonic settings, on the other, have enabled regional metallogenetic provinces to be defined, which have proved helpful in the search for ore deposits.
During the 20th century the exploitation of mineral deposits was so intense that serious depletion of many resources was predicted. Mercury reserves, for example, are particularly low. To deal with this problem, it has become necessary to mine deposits having smaller and smaller workable grades, a trend well illustrated by the copper mining industry, which now extracts copper from rocks with grades as low as 0.2 percent.
Investigators have discovered a major potential metallic source on the deep ocean floor, where there are large concentrations of manganese-rich nodules along with minor amounts of copper, nickel, and cobalt. Such concentrations are especially abundant in three sections of the Pacific Ocean—the area near Hawaii, that northeast of New Zealand, and that west of Central America.
Earthquake prediction and control
No natural event is as destructive over so large an area in so short a time as an earthquake. Throughout the centuries earthquakes have been responsible not only for millions of deaths but also for tremendous damage to property and the natural landscape. If major earthquakes could be predicted, it would be possible to evacuate population centres and take other measures that could minimize the loss of life and perhaps reduce damage to property as well. For this reason earthquake prediction has become a major concern of seismologists in the United States, Russia, Japan, and China.
World seismicity patterns show that earthquakes tend to occur along active plate boundaries where there is subduction (Japan) or strike-slip motion (California) and along strike-slip faults (as in China, where they are the result of the northward migration of India into Asia). Investigators agree that much more has to be learned about the physical properties of rocks in fault zones before they are able to make use of changes in these properties to predict earthquakes, though the use of Global Positioning Systems (GPS) at satellite ground stations over the years is providing quantitative data on a millimetre scale concerning the relative movement of crustal blocks across seismic faults. Recent research has suggested that rocks may become strained shortly before an earthquake and affect such observable properties of the Earth’s crust as seismic wave velocity and radon concentration. Leveling surveys and tiltmeter measurements have revealed that deformation in the fault zone just prior to an earthquake may cause changes in ground level and, in certain cases, variations in groundwater level. Also, some investigators have reported changes in the electric resistivity and remanent magnetization of rocks as precursory phenomena.
Since the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, seismic activity along the nearby San Andreas Fault has been closely monitored. It has been observed that numerous semicontinuous microearthquakes have occurred along some sections of the fault. These small quakes seem to release built-up strain and thus prevent large earthquakes. By contrast, intervening sections of the fault are apparently locked and thus manifest no microshocks. Consequently, seismic strain accumulating in these locked sections is expected to be released one day in a major quake.
Seismological research includes the study of earthquakes caused by human activities, such as impounding water behind high dams, injecting fluids into deep wells, excavating mines, and detonating underground nuclear explosions. In all of these cases except for deep mining, seismologists have found that the induction mechanism most likely involves the release of elastic strain, just as with earthquakes of tectonic origin. Studies of artificially induced quakes suggest that one possible method of controlling natural earthquakes is to inject fluids into fault zones so as to release strain energy.
Seismologists have done much to explain the characteristics of ground motions recorded in earthquakes. Such information is required to predict ground motions in future earthquakes, thereby enabling engineers to design earthquake-resistant structures. The largest percentage of the deaths and property damage that result from an earthquake is attributable to the collapse of buildings, bridges, and other man-made structures during the violent shaking of the ground. An effective way of reducing the destructiveness of earthquakes, therefore, is to build structures capable of withstanding intense ground motions.
Other areas of application
The fields of engineering, environmental, and urban geology are broadly concerned with applying the findings of geologic studies to construction engineering and to problems of land use. The location of a bridge, for example, involves geologic considerations in selecting sites for the supporting piers. The strength of geologic materials such as rock or compacted clay that occur at the sites of the piers should be adequate to support the load placed on them. Engineering geology is concerned with the engineering properties of geologic materials, including their strength, permeability, and compactability, and with the influence of these properties on the selection of locations for buildings, roads and railroads, bridges, dams, and other major civil features.
Urban geology involves the application of engineering geology and other fields of geology to environmental problems in urban areas. Environmental geology is generally concerned with those aspects of geology that touch on the human environment. Environmental and urban geology deal in large measure with those aspects of geology that directly influence land use. These include the stability of sites for buildings and other civil features, sources of water supply (hydrogeology), contamination of waters by sewage and chemical pollutants, selection of sites for burial of refuse so as to minimize pollution by seepage, and locating the source of geologic building materials, including sand, gravel, and crushed rock. Since the late 1990s the importance of environmental geology has increased considerably in most developed countries as societies became aware of the environmental impact of humankind.
John W. Harbaugh Brian Frederick Windley