By Fiona Burns and Luis Buatois (University of Saskatchewan)
Ichnology represents a valuable predictive tool that can, when integrated with other sedimentological techniques, successfully help refine depositional and reservoir models. This course is therefore designed for geoscientists working in the oil and gas industry who want to expand their sedimentological knowledge base and understand the applications of ichnology, combined with conventional sedimentological techniques, for reservoir description.
It would also be a useful course for MSc and PhD students to attend who are embarking on projects where the identification of traces and their environmental implications are useful, either in core or outcrop. Cores from non-marine, near-shore, and deep marine settings are displayed. The course is delivered as a series of lectures, each followed by exercises in the Core Library.
Course objectives
- Ability to identify common traces in non-marine, shallow marine and deep marine settings;
- Understanding of usefulness of an Ichnology approach to palaeoenvironmental interpretations;
- Ability to use Ichnology when undertaking basic reservoir description;
- Knowledge of various approaches to trace fossil analysis undertaken by workers/research groups worldwide.