October 2017

This month, AAPG will hold our International Conference and Exhibition ICE in London. The theme of the event is “100 Years of Science Fueled by 100 Years of Prosperity.”

The sense of awe and wonder many of us in the northern hemisphere experienced during August’s solar eclipse, which I wrote about in last month’s column, has since given way this month to shock and horror as the natural world demonstrated its awesome power in other ways.

With more than 18 percent of the membership based in and around Houston, if we haven’t been directly impacted by the storms ourselves, many of us have friends and colleagues who have been.

Curvature has long been used by geologists to predict the density of natural fractures from outcrop. Sand box experiments show that correlations between curvature and strain can be significant, which is supportive of the curvature-strain-natural fractures supposition inherent in the use of curvature to predict natural fractures.

The first major technical breakthrough in petroleum geology was foraminiferal micropaleontology – made by three young “girls” in 1921, which, within three years, created oil industry jobs for 300 micropaleontologists and gave rise to micropaleontology courses in 31 geology departments.

The perception that the study of geology must be interwoven with physical challenges still acts as a barrier to participation for students and practitioners with disabilities in the geosciences. The IAGD works to change that perception.