Knowledge Bank

Faulting in the formations that make up the Rome trough beneath Southeastern Ohio and Eastern Kentucky was caused by the mountain building processes uplifting the Appalachian Mountains. Though generally inactive at present, these faults reflect zones of weakness within the basement rocks activated by current crustal stresses. With the increase in subsurface engineering in Ohio and Kentucky, the detailed structure of rock units is becoming more important for aspects of oil and gas migration and recovery, CO2 sequestration, and waste injection. Knowing the position of faults allows engineers to better estimate pathways for subsurface fluid and gas migration. It is also important for scientists and engineers to understand the fault structures in order to pinpoint earthquake epicenters and plan for earthquake hazards. For example, injecting waste near a fault may cause the triggering of an earthquake due to the lubrication of a fault surface. The basement faults mapped within Ohio and the surrounding states are poorly understood (Hansen 2012). The purpose of this research is to develop a more detailed view of fault structures from available sedimentary isopach and structure data using the grid manipulation software known as Mirone. Mirone is an in-depth grid operation and analysis program with the capability of taking the gradients of gridded isopach and structural data. This isolates the areas of the largest offset in the dataset and after adjusting the color palette the faults show up as lines in the dataset. These data will be useful for anyone in need of a comprehensive view of the structures found in the Rome trough. Future work will include the 3-dimensional mapping of Rome trough faults to better demonstrate the detail and nature of the faulting and bedding planes involved.