Homework 4 - Data and Discussion

Topic of my Final Project

Bedrock Topography under Phoenix

I plan to develop a 3D image showing bedrock shapes and structures under a portion of Phoenix based on information from several wells that have been drilled in the area of interest.

Data I Will Use

Latitude and Longitude of each well
Elevation of ground surface for each well
Depth to bedrock encountered at each well location

Data Sources

Steve Reynolds recently published a paper on this topic. He has provided a copy of his PDF file which contains a table of ground surface and bedrock elevations. He has also provided a Word document with a table showing the coordinates of each well.

Sample Data

Here is an example of the data in the well coordinates file:

"SITE_ID","XCoord","YCoord","Coord_Sys","MP_Elev","Total_Depth"

"DM301",482808.1875,896181.625,"Sta",1212.86,123
"DM302",482854.09375,896152.3125,"Sta",1212.46,124
"DM303",482748,896438.8125,"Sta",1209.43,105
"DM304",482746.5,896388.125,"Sta",1209.19,105
"DM305",480607.59375,896763.375,"Sta",1185.73,118
"DM306",480391.1875,896527.3125,"Sta",1181.04,120
"DM307",480269.1875,896232.125,"Sta",1177.64,140
"DM308",480231.3125,895913.6875,"Sta",1177.63,145
"DM309",480233.3125,895573.8125,"Sta",1174.88,167
"DM310",480233.6875,895253.8125,"Sta",1175.17,155
"DM311",480224.59375,894933.875,"Sta",1173.36,120
"DM312",480226.59375,894614,"Sta",1171.41,113
"DM313",480228.5,894294,"Sta",1169.71,105

These records appear suitable for my project, because they show both the location of the well (in X and Y coordinates) and information about elevation and depth. Of the 1011 rows in the table, however, many appear to be missing either location or depth information. With further analysis, then, I may need to eliminate rows which do not contain enough information to be useful in this project.

Questions

What shapes exist underground?
Is the data sufficient to infer an approximation of these shapes and underground structures?
Can a computer-generated projection of bedrock topography help us "see" and understand these structures and their potential geologic significance?

The data will help answer these questions by making it possible to construct a digital model of surface and bedrock topography.

Written by	Marvin Simkin
Filename	hw04data.html
Last updated	September 25, 2002