HR: 0800h
AN: MR11B-0938    [Abstracts]
TI: Experiments in a Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory (DUSEL) Hosted in Sedimentary Rocks
AU: * Burbey, T J
EM: tjburbey@vt.edu
AF: Virginia Tech, Department of Geosciences 4044 Derring Hall, Blacksburg, VA 24061
AU: Kimballton Science Team, m o
EM: rjb@vt.edu
AF: Virginia Tech, Department of Geosciences 4044 Derring Hall, Blacksburg, VA 24061
AB: Sedimentary-rock environments, particularly those dominated by carbonate rock, provide unique opportunities for geoscientists, geobiologists, and geophysicists, to perform revolutionary experiments aimed at answering fundamental science questions and satisfying our societal demands for resources and environmental stewardship. As part of the National Science Foundation's DUSEL initiative, the selected site should offer structurally and biologically diverse environments. At the same time, the site should offer host rock capable of providing safely engineered hallways and laboratories at depths as great as 2,200 m for numerous deep underground physics, engineering, and earth science experiments. An ideal sedimentary-rock environment offers the prospect of highly folded, thrusted, and fractured rocks that allow opportunities to study the 3-D behavior of thrusts that propagate parallel to bedding as well as those that ramp across bedding. Flow dynamics along and across deeply buried faults is poorly understood. Experiments will be developed at various scales to assess flow and transport processes to better quantify hydrogeological mechanisms influencing flow and possible aquifer compartmentalization. Seismic reflection images, vertical seismic profiles, and tomograms will provide details of the fault properties and geometry, which can be verified in-situ. Repeated overthrusted sequences provide opportunities for geobiologists to investigate how microbes in rocks of similar age are affected by differences in pressure, temperature, and depth. Carbonate rocks provide opportunities to study energy sources and adaptations for nutrient acquisition, reproduction, stability, survival, and repair under extreme conditions. Results from these investigations will permit comparisons with other foreland fold-thrust belts worldwide. Fossil fuels remain the world's main energy resource and the large majority of these are hosted in sedimentary rocks. Improved methods for reservoir characterization are needed. A DUSEL hosted in sedimentary rocks provides opportunities to simulate the formation of hydrocarbon reservoirs in well-characterized rock at the kilometer scale. Such a facility can be used to study the factors that control generation, migration and trapping of aqueous and hydrocarbon fluids, while allowing greater understanding of the role of microbes in terminal electron accepting processes in fractured-rock environments. DUSEL will provide unique opportunities to assess and evaluate seismic reservoir characterization techniques, monitoring methods, and modeling approaches. Carefully monitored subsequent excavation into the reservoir will permit direct assessment of imaging success and evaluation of geochemical mechanisms, pathways and processes. Many of the metals and energy resources used by modern industrialized societies are formed as a result of fluid-rock interactions. An understanding of the physical and chemical factors that determine solubility, transport, and deposition is critical to development of successful exploration strategies for new resources. DUSEL will permit experiments aimed at perturbing the natural system, while allowing for measurements and sample collection under carefully controlled conditions to constrain key parameters that form copper, zinc, lead and other metal deposits. These experiments will provide clues to how host rocks affect fluid chemistries and the role that biological activity plays in the formation of metal sulfide deposits.
UR: http://www.phys.vt.edu/~kimballton/
DE: 1800 HYDROLOGY
DE: 0400 Biogeosciences
DE: 0800 EDUCATION
DE: 1000 GEOCHEMISTRY (New field, replaces Rock Chemistry)
SC: Mineral and Rock Physics [MR]
MN: 2004 AGU Fall Meeting