structural geology

Oman work published in Journal of Structural Geology by Sam Cornish

Just a short post to say that the Journal of Structural Geology has accepted and published online my full-length research article "3D geometry and kinematic evolution of the Wadi Mayh sheath fold, Oman, using detailed mapping from high-resolution photography", co-authored with Mike Searle.

You can access the article for free in the next 50 days using this link: https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1VFeV_4N85EuBI

The permanent doi link is: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsg.2017.06.009

I'm excited to have my first peer-reviewed publication! I'm delighted that it stands as evidence that photography can be a useful tool for better understanding Earth processes. It's inconceivable that I would have been able to properly understand and elucidate the geological structure of the subject (the Wadi Mayh sheath fold) without performing a high-resolution photographic survey, producing scores of panoramas and even a 3D scene model using Agisoft Photoscan.

The structurally interpreted panoramas I think also have an aesthetic value which hopefully makes them accessible and meaningful in some way to those outside of the structural geology community.

Having said that, I do think that gaining some understanding of the Earth processes evident in an image can enhance the narrative and potency of that image. An open question: can a better understanding of Earth processes add something to our landscape photography?

One of the annotated panoramas

One of the annotated panoramas

A close up section of the above panorama and an illustration of how such folds can form under simple/general shear

A close up section of the above panorama and an illustration of how such folds can form under simple/general shear