Tribute to Harry E. Wheeler

H.E. Wheeler's Innovation

A short note for those who are innovative and do not bother about making patents.
By F. Qayyum

Wheeler spent his time with Sloss and finally got succeeded in presenting a stratigraphic unit within a spatio-temporal framework. When he proposed the idea to the scientific community, he probably did not think that his innovation would be commercialize in such a way that at present days people will earn money. He proposed an idea voluntarily just like other geologists such as Steno, Lyell, William Smith etc. No one would have ever thought that their principles (non patented) would  be used everyday. They actually benefited the entire mankind and thanks to them that we are using them to explore for the energy resources.

In any case, we started using those concepts and put patents on top of each others. If you scroll through the historical development of Wheeler diagrams, you would be fully surprised that why are we doing this. We invent something on top of a pre-invented feature and call it as a standalone protected intellectual property. We probably do this because we do not want that others would commercialize our technology / methodology. We are probably right in doing this. It also tells that a human being is hungry at both ends: one wants to protect his idea because the others want to steal it. You cannot just stop it.

Should Innovation Stop?

Innovation should never stop. It is a kind of wind that blossoms the trees and finally us. Wheeler diagrams have always been extended just as the seismic technology is progressing. New ideas are revolutionalizing and people are utilizing these diagrams to understand the subsurface. It does not matter to those who are innovative and like to be creative if their ideas based on a pre-invented idea should be protected or not.

For those, who are not aware of the progress of Wheeler diagrams, here is a brief historical sketch:

1958 - Harry E. Wheeler, fundamental sketch and concept of Time Stratigraphy.

1977 - Exxon Group lead by Peter Vail used Wheeler's idea on the seismic data.
2002 - Keskes from Elf (Total) introduced the seismically driven Wheeler diagram

2003 - Lomask introduced the idea of flattenning without picking in SEG. Stakr also introduced his idea of phased based transformation into age volume that later on got rightly published in 2004.

2004 - Tracy Stark extended the idea to 3D Seismic

2005- 2011, market opens and many algorithms were introduced such as Ligtenberg et al., 2006; Monsen et al., 2007; Lacaze et al., 2011.

2012-onwards Extension to the Wheeler diagrams by Qayyum et al., 2012a, b. Integration of seismic and well data and the introduction of 4th dimension in the existing Wheeler diagrams.

What Next?

I personally think that we should be thinking of innovating and extending the ideas further. We have recently introduced the 4D Wheeler diagrams in the William Smith Meeting 2012. That is the next step for all of us! We should be preparing the chronostratigraphic charts based on such a concept i.e. integrate multi-resolution datasets and add the missing dimension to the diagram that you construct. The only possible approach is the method that we introduced.

I believe that people would like to use that concept to build an appropriate sequence stratigraphic framework. You will read its full text soon. I hope that you will like it.

Tribute to Wheeler

Thank you Harry, if you would not have created such a crazy diagram, we would not have taken it that far. You earned probably reputation but you have no idea what others are earning nowadays. You made the concept clear and people made the applications clearer. Well its a cruel industry. But we can never forget your idea and will continuously extend it. I hope that your message is clear enough to us to give you an everlasting tribute.

This is my first post on this blog! Happy reading and apologies for a bad English.

References

Keskes, N. 2002. GEOTIME TM: A New Tool for Seismic Stratigraphy Analysis. VailFest; Sequence Stratigraphic Symposium, A Tribute to Peter R. Vail.

Lacaze, S., Pauget, F., Lopez, M. & Gay, A. 2011. Seismic Stratigraphic Interpretation from a Geological Model – A North Sea Case Study. 81st International Annual Meeting. San Antonio: Society of Exploration Geophysics (SEG).

Ligtenberg, H., de Bruin, G. & Hemstra, N. 2006. Sequence Stratigraphic Interpretation in the Wheeler Transformed (Flattened) Seismic Domain. 68th EAGE Conference & Exhibition. Vienna.

Lomask, J. 2003. Flattening 3-D seismic cubes without picking. 73rd Annual International Meeting. Dallas, Texas: Society of Exploration Geophysics (SEG).

Monsen, E., Borgos, H. G., Le Guern, P. & Sonneland, L. 2007. Geological Process Controlled Interpretation Based On 3D Wheeler Diagram Generation. SEG Annual Meeting. San Antonio, Texas: Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG).

Qayyum, F., de Groot, P., and Hemstra, N., 2012a. Using 3D Wheeler diagrams in Seismic Interpretation - The HorizonCube method. First break, 30, p. 103-109.

Qayyum, F., de Groot, P., and Hemstra, N., 2012a. From 2D to 4D Wheeler diagrams, William Smith Meeting, Strata and Time - Probing the gaps in our understanding, Sep 4-5, London.

Stark, T. J. 2004. Relative geologic time (age) volumes—Relating every seismic sample to a geologically reasonable horizon. The Leading Edge, 23, 928-932.

Wheeler, H.E. 1958, Time Stratigraphy, AAPG Bulletin, 42, p. 1047-1063.

Wheeler, H.E. 1964, Base level, lithosphere surface, and time stratigraphy, Geologic Society of America Bulletin, July 1964, 75(7), p. 599-610.