Web-Based Outcrop Digital Analog Database (WODAD): Archiving and Searching Carbonate Platform Margins

Jeroen A.M. Kenter¹ and Paul M. Harris^2
1 Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, Netherlands
² Chevron Petroleum Technology Company, Houston, TX

The lack of coherent and public data bases on outcrop data counterbalanced by the shared academic and industry need for such information has initiated the Web-based Outcrop Digital Analog Database (WODAD). This public, searchable, database is a serious attempt to make outcrop information more readily available to earth scientists. Such analogs can help professionals to conceptualize stratigraphic, facies and diagenetic relationships that develop reservoirs and traps while it may provide academics with a tool to compare and contrast information across geological time and space.

WODAD will cover the Phanerozoic and include carbonates initially, but later clastics as well as mixed systems. The database consists of a series of chapters, each focusing on a specific outcrop. Each chapter contains a summary page with search items, a few (2-3) pages of descriptive information, and a short reference list. A section of each summary page contains the items that will eventually guide the search. The primary search items will be age, system type (for carbonate, platform type), rock properties (lithology, texture), overprint (recrystallization, fracture, karst), and geographical location.

The database will offer unique and unsurpassed opportunities for comparative research, many of which will be only discovered once the database is available. WODAD “carbonates” is currently operational and is partly funded by Chevron. Contributions from academia and industry are invited through submission of an abstract as well as through personal invitations (see wodad.org for information and instructions). It is anticipated that by 2007 the database will be published as a digital publication.