Modeling Gas, Hydrates, and Slope Stability on the U.S. Atlantic Margin during Pleistocene Glaciations

Dissociation of methane hydrates in shallow marine sediments due to increasing global temperatures can lead to the venting of methane gas or seafloor destabilization. Along the U.S. Atlantic margin there is a well-documented history of slope failure and numerous gas seeps have been recorded. Several studies have linked slope failure to gas seepage and hydrate dissociation driven by glacial-interglacial transitions, but this linkage has not been quantitatively demonstrated. Along the shelf edge, in an area where shallow methane gas seeps have been identified, we modeled methane gas and hydrate formation over the last 120,000 to simulate a glacial-interglacial cycle. The development of hydrate and gas during this time was modeled using the PFLOTRAN software from Sandia National Laboratories, a parallel subsurface flow code. At 100-year intervals during this simulation, we calculated the factor of safety throughout the modeled sediment column. Factor of safety compares the shearing and resisting stresses of a slope and can be used to determine if sediment failure is likely to occur in an area. Modeling seafloor depths between 200-1000 m we predicted gas and hydrate development and calculated the associated factor of safety over time to determine if sediment failure was likely to be caused by hydrate dissociation. Parallelizing this code, we used Lonestar6 to run the one-dimensional fluid flow model and factor of safety model at 16044 individual locations in the region between 29°N – 45°N and 82°W – 66°W at a resolution of 1 x 1 arcminutes. We found that hydrate dissociation alone is unlikely to cause sediment failure in the region, implying that an additional driving force would be necessary for failure to occur. In addition, we see a shift down slope of when the minimum factor of safety is likely to occur and the depth below seafloor at which this minimum occurs.Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC

Insight into the Sealing Capacity of Mudrocks determined using a Digital Rock Physics Workflow

Primary objective: To better understand seal capacity in mudrocks and to determine the conditions under which a mudrock seal fails by allowing a non-wetting fluid to percolate. Hypothesis: Mudrock seals can fail below the fracture pressure if there exists a percolating pathway formed due to a continuous and sufficiently large pore-throat system. Procedure: We used SEM images of uncemented muds obtained at various depths (< 1.1 km burial) in the Kumano Basin offshore Japan for the study. Image mosaics were filtered and segmented using conventional and machine-learning techniques to identify the pore space, silt, and clay grains. We applied a 3D stochastic technique for pore space reconstruction from the SEM images and simulated capillary drainage in the resulting 3D volumes by the lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) using Stampede 2. Conclusion: Results showed that porosity and permeability decreased with depth, and capillary threshold pressure values increased. However, increasing silt content at a particular depth counteracted this behavior, due to better preservation of larger pores and throats.Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC

Pore-Scale Controls on Permeability, Fluid Flow, and Methane Hydrate Distribution in Fine-Grained Sediments

Permeability in fine-grained sediments is governed by the surface area exposed to fluid flow and tortuosity of the pore network. I modify an existing technique of computing permeability from nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) data to extend its applicability beyond reservoir-quality rocks to the fine-grained sediments that comprise the majority of the sedimentary column. This modification involves correcting the NMR data to account for the large surface areas and disparate mineralogies typically exhibited by fine-grained sediments. Through measurements on resedimented samples composed of controlled mineralogies, I show that this modified NMR permeability algorithm accurately predicts permeability over 5 orders of magnitude. This work highlights the importance of pore system surface area and geometry in determining transport properties of porous media. I use these insights to probe the pore-scale controls on methane hydrate distribution and hydraulic fracturing behavior, both of which are controlled by flux and permeability. To do this I employ coupled poromechanical models of hydrate formation in marine sediments. Fracture-hosted methane hydrate deposits are found at many sites worldwide, and I investigate whether pore occlusion and permeability reduction due to hydrate formation can drive pore fluid pressures to the point at which the sediments iii fracture hydraulically. I find that hydraulic fractures may form in systems with high flux and/or low permeability; that low-permeability layers can influence the location of fracture initiation if they are thicker than a critical value that is a function of flux and layer permeability; that capillary-driven depression of the triple point of methane in finegained sediments causes hydrate to form preferentially in coarse-grained layers; that the relative fluxes of gas and water in multiphase systems controls hydrate distribution and the location of fracture initiation; and that methane hydrate systems are dynamic systems in which methane flux and hydrate formation cause changes in fluid flow on time scales of hundreds to thousands of years. My results illustrate how pore-scale processes affect macro scale properties of methane hydrate systems and generally affect fluid flow and transport from pore to basin scale

Impact of Gas Saturation and Gas Column Height at the Base of the Gas Hydrate Stability Zone on Fracturing and Seepage at Vestnesa Ridge, West-Svalbard Margin

The Vestnesa Ridge, located off the west Svalbard margin, is a >60 km long ridge consisting of fine-grained sediments that host a deep-marine gas hydrate and associated seepage system. Geological and geophysical observations indicate the predominance of vertical fluid expulsion through fractures with pockmarks expressed on the seafloor along the entire ridge. However, despite the apparent evidence for an extended free gas zone (FGZ) below the base of the gas hydrate stability zone (BGHSZ), present-day seafloor seepage has been confirmed only on the eastern half of the sedimentary ridge. In this study, we combine the relationships between aqueous phase pressure, capillary pressure, sediment clay fraction, porosity, and total stress to simulate how much gas is required to open preexisting fractures from the BGHSZ towards the seafloor. Data from four specific sites with different lithology and pressure regime along the ridge are used to constrain the simulations. Results demonstrate that fracturing is favored from the FGZ (with gas saturations < 0.1 and gas column heights < 15 m) towards the seafloor. Neglecting the capillary pressure overpredicts the size of the gas column by up to 10 times, leading to erroneous maximum gas vent volume predictions and associated ocean biosphere consequences. Further parametric analyses indicate that variations in the regional stress regime have the potential to modify the fracture criterion, thus driving the differences in venting across the ridge. Our results are in line with independent geophysical observations and petroleum system modeling in the study area, adding confidence to the proposed approach and highlighting the importance of the capillary pressure influence on gas pressur

Optimal timing for power plant maintenance in the Electricity Reliability Council of Texas in a changing climate

We analyzed data for the Electricity Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) to assess shoulder seasons -- that is, the 45 days of lowest total energy use and peak demand in the spring and fall -- and whether their occurrence has changed over time. Over the period 1996--2022, the shoulder seasons never started earlier than late March nor later than mid-October, corresponding well with the minimum of total degree days. In the temperature record 1959--2022, the minimum in degree days in the spring moved earlier, from early March to early February, and in the fall moved later, from early to mid-November. Warming temperatures might cause these minima in degree days to merge into a single annual minimum in December or January by the mid-2040s, a time when there is a non-trivial risk of 1-day record energy use and peak demand from winter storms

Linking basin-scale and pore-scale gas hydrate distribution patterns in diffusion-dominated marine hydrate systems

The goal of this study is to computationally determine the potential distribution patterns of diffusion-driven methane hydrate accumulations in coarse-grained marine sediments. Diffusion of dissolved methane in marine gas hydrate systems has been proposed as a potential transport mechanism through which large concentrations of hydrate can preferentially accumulate in coarse-grained sediments over geologic time. Using one-dimensional compositional reservoir simulations, we examine hydrate distribution patterns at the scale of individual sand layers (1-20 m thick) that are deposited between microbially active fine-grained material buried through the gas hydrate stability zone (GHSZ). We then extrapolate to two-dimensional and basin-scale three-dimensional simulations, where we model dipping sands and multilayered systems. We find that properties of a sand layer including pore size distribution, layer thickness, dip, and proximity to other layers in multilayered systems all exert control on diffusive methane fluxes toward and within a sand, which in turn impact the distribution of hydrate throughout a sand unit. In all of these simulations, we incorporate data on physical properties and sand layer geometries from the Terrebonne Basin gas hydrate system in the Gulf of Mexico. We demonstrate that diffusion can generate high hydrate saturations (upward of 90%) at the edges of thin sands at shallow depths within the GHSZ, but that it is ineffective at producing high hydrate saturations throughout thick (greater than 10 m) sands buried deep within the GHSZ. Furthermore, we find that hydrate in fine-grained material can preserve high hydrate saturations in nearby thin sands with burial

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

(Table 1) Porosity measurements, median pore diameter of pore sizes and volume fractions of bulk sediment from different Holes of IODP site 333

Microporosity by performing low pressure nitrogen adsorption measurements on 13 shallow marine mudstone samples from the Nankai Trough offshore Japan. The samples were from two reference Sites on the incoming Philippine Sea Plate, and one Site above the accretionary prism. I determined pore size distributions using the Barrett–Joyner–Hallenda (BJH) model, and merged these with existing mercury injection capillary pressure (MICP) measurements to construct a full distribution covering micro- to macropores. I found that overall pore sizes decrease with consolidation, and that microporosity content (pores < 2 nm in diameter) is influenced mainly by mineralogy, with some influence of diagenetic processes. A small amount of microporosity (~ 0.25% of bulk sediment volume) is present in these sediments at the time of burial, presumably contained mainly in clays. Additional microporosity may develop as a result of alteration of volcanic ash at the reference Sites, and may be related to diagenetic processes that create zones of anomalous high porosity. Comparisons with porewater chemistry (K+, Ca2 +, Sr, Si) show inconsistent relationships with microporosity development and cannot confirm or deny the role of ash alteration in this process. The strongest correlation observed at the three Sites was between microporosity volume and clay mineral fraction. This suggests that microporosity content is determined mainly by detrital clay abundance and development of clay as an ash alteration product, with some contribution from amorphous silica cement precipitated in the zones of anomalous high porosity

Pore size controls on the base of the methane hydrate stability zone in the Kumano Basin, offshore Japan

The base of the methane hydrate stability zone (MHSZ) in the Kumano Basin, offshore Japan, is marked by a bottom-simulating reflection (BSR) on seismic data. At Integrated Ocean Drilling Program Site C0002, which penetrates this BSR, the in situ temperature profile combined with bulk seawater methane equilibrium conditions suggest that the base of the MHSZ is 428 m below seafloor (bsf), which is 28 m deeper than the observed BSR (400 m bsf). We found that submicron pore sizes determined by mercury injection capillary pressure are sufficiently small to cause 64% of the observed uplift of the base of the MHSZ by the Gibbs-Thomson effect. This is the most thorough characterization of pore sizes within the MHSZ performed to date and illustrates the extent to which pore size can influence MHSZ thickness. Our results demonstrate the importance of considering lithology and pore structure when assessing methane hydrate stability conditions in marine sediments