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New York Times OP-ED Article on Heavy Oil Biography I describe my research activities in two categories - research that I have carried out in the past (Research Highlights), and Current Research. San AndreasProject My current research principally involves various aspects of gravity gradiometry. These include inversion of the gravity gradient tensor. I have tackled inversion in the space domain and have developed inversion software (Pending Publications). The inversion software is capable of inverting (singly or jointly) all the components of the gradient tensor, gravity, and total intensity magnetic anomaly. I am now in the process of developing methodology for inversion in the frequency domain (Gradient Inversion Project).
The six figures on the left show the six gravity gradients forward modeled for an arbitrary irregularly shaped body. The first six figures on the right show the inversions of the six gradients. (They are nearly identical!). The top right inversion is for "Differential Curvature", and the bottom right also for Differential Curvature, but under different assumptions.
I am also planning to conduct an airborne gravity gradiometer project over the San Andreas Fault proposed drill site (San Andreas Project), which has been jointly funded by the National Science foundation and several industrial organizations. This project consists of obtaining airborne gravity gradient measurements over the San Andreas Fault drill site. The actual measurements will be carried out by a contractor.
I am also involved in proposing "time lapse" gravity gradient measurements in two areas. In cooperation with Lockheed Martin who has developed a gravity gradiometer especially for this purpose, measurements are proposed at intervals of a few months to a few years to track the steam/oil interface in heavy oil reservoirs where a steam drive is being used to produce the heavy oil. Because the permeability in the reservoir may not be uniform, the position of the steam oil interface is not precisely known. Tracking the steam oil interface precisely with repeated gravity gradient measurements can greatly aid in producing the heavy oil effectively. (Dan DiFrancesco Talwani Paper) The other areas involve making time lapse measurements to track density changes down to several kilometers in the Earth's crust. I have submitted a proposal to NASA (NASA 4 D Proposal) to make repeat airborne measurements over the San Andreas Fault drill site to track any6 subsurface mass shifts in the time between successive measurements that could be associated with differences in mass movements on opposite sides of the San Andreas Fault.
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