Beginning the Science!

July 5th, 2010

We completed our river acquisition on July 1st. Then on Friday we finished packing up everything we'd put on the ship and putting it back in the van for Kirk and Steffen to return to the University of Texas. I really enjoyed the time I spent on the boat. I learned a ton about acquiring and processing marine data. As well as handling emergencies with equipment. But I am also very excited to begin the interpretation and analysis of the data we collected. 

 Beatrice and I met today to discuss my project for the summer.  My first two weeks are going to be spent bringing in all the seg-y data we have from the Chirp into Landmark. While I'm bringing it all in I am going to be looking through all of the Chirp data for interesting features. This includes the region I previously mentioned where the Claiborne was covered in faults. I will be determining the strike and dip of this region and possibly even the stresses that would be necessary to produce the numerous faults we saw. There were a couple other places we noticed as we moonwalked down the Mississippi where the Claiborne also was very visible so I'll certainly be taking a look at those. Then there were sections of the river when no one was watching the Chirp so we have no idea if anything was there or not so it will be my responsibility to play the whole trip back and perform and in-depth search for anything and everything of consequence.  

Once all the data has been brought into Landmark and I've scanned through it, I am going to begin creating a 3D profile of the Claiborne section as well as interpreting other areas of note. Meanwhile Guolei will be bringing in and interpreting the streamer data we collected. So while I will be looking intensely at shallower formations he will be looking at every layer including the cretaceous, paleozoic, etc. Interpretation should take another two weeks and then we're going to take a real look at everything we've got and begin the analysis and I'll hopefully start writing my abstract and planning my poster for AGU with the direction we're choosing to take. 

Alongside all of this, Guolei and I will be working together to write the official trip report for this project. This will be a daily log of the events that occured along with a detailed explanation of exactly how we did everything. We already began on the boat by taking pictures of the setup we had for the streamer, airgun, and chirp as well as measuring exactly where everything was in relation to the barge and the Strong. Guolei made detailed diagrams with the dimensions and objects which will be included in the report.