The Swiss Jura is part of a larger region, the Jura, which stretches from Geneva to Germany, partly as a series of folds, partly as tablelands. The mountains were formed during the late phase of the Alpine folding during the Tertiary and are composed of Mesozoic rocks, mainly limestone and clay. The changing strata give way to a particular landscape, and the presence of limestone makes it a vas...

Clayrock formations are under consideration to serve as host formation and geological barriers for radioactive waste repositories due to their favorable properties (low permeability, low diffusion coefficient, high retention capacity for radionuclides...). The currently on-going European CATCLAY project (EURATOM FP7) (www.catclay.org) is focused on understanding the fundamental processes govern...

Early Cambrian volcanic rocks of the Posht-e Badam tectonic block in Central Iran which is hydrothermally altered to green color rocks, hosts the Kiruna-type Iron Oxide-Apatite (IOA) mineralization in Anomaly 10 of Sechahun deposit. Geochemically, these volcanic rocks are classified as high-potassium calc-alkaline and mainly consist of rhyolite and trachyandesite. These rocks are important for ...

The AOC Granite 7-32-89-10 hole, drilled to search for oil in the Precambrian basement below the Alberta bituminous (tar) sands near Fort McMurray, Canada, penetrates layered biotite-hypersthene quartz diorite-gabbro sills that occur between 543 and 2363.3 meters depth. Three episodes of fracturing and cataclasis affected these sills. The first allowed Kand Si-metasomatism to change many parts ...

We experimentally determined the hydraulic properties of fractures within various rock types, focusing on a variety Variscan rocks. Flow-through experiments were performed slate, graywacke, quartzite, granite, natural fault gouge, and claystone samples containing an artificial fracture with given roughness. For slate samples, transmissivity was measured at confining pressures, pc, up to 50 MPa,...

The ~5 km diameter Gow Lake impact structure formed in the Canadian Shield of northern Saskatchewan approximately 197 Myr ago. This has not been studied detail since its discovery during a regional gravity survey early 1970s. We report here on field observations from 2011 expedition that, when combined with subsequent laboratory studies, have revealed wealth new information about this poorly st...

We studied the elastic moduli, ductile creep behavior, and brittle strength of shale-gas reservoir rocks from Barnett, Haynesville, Eagle Ford, and Fort St. John shale in a series of triaxial laboratory experiments. We found a strong correlation between the shale compositions, in particular, the volume of clay plus kerogen and intact rock strength, frictional strength, and viscoplastic creep. V...