Power-law stratigraphy

Abstract

Digital well-logs registering the mineral properties of a drilled section provide information directly referring to its layering. Returns analyses of such logs can be used to generate an inventory of the layer thicknesses defined by the sampled variable. This reveals that layer thickness relationships have fractal-like power-law attributes, with negative exponents around 1.7, independent of the scale, age, facies and rates of accumulation of the analysed sections. Further research may show this to be a universal property of the stratigraphic record. Also, global average rates of accumulation of a wide range of facies prove to decline, power-law fashion, as the time-span of the estimate increases. Hence the stratigraphic record's layer-limiting hiatuses appear fractal-like in their temporal scaling. These related lines of evidence combine to suggest that the record is neither naturally hierarchical, nor inherently cyclic; and the corollary of an established universal stratal power-law would be that accumulation rarely occurs other than in circumstances leading to this condition.