Application of ground-based LIDAR for the study of the Huesca Fluvial Fan (Northern Ebro Basin, Spain): modelling the Montearagón outcrop

The emergence of new techniques usually awakes a strong interest within the scientific community for testing its potential applications in different fields. Thus, any new tool or methodology should be validated previously to its systematic application. Validation process must be carried out in places sufficiently known in order to verify if the results are consistent with those expected. This work aims to incorporate the Light Detection And Ranging technique (LIDAR) to study sedimentary outcrops (Bellian, J. et al.; 2005). The used methodology includes both classical field study and geometric information extracted from the analysis of LIDAR-based Virtual Outcrop (VO). In this case, the chosen study area is the Montearagón outcrop. As illustrated in Fig. 1, Montearagón is located in the Northern margin of the Ebro Foreland Basin (Arenas, C. et al., 2001; Luzón, A., 2005), 11 km Northeast of Huesca (Aragón). The outcropping materials correspond to the Oligo-Miocene Huesca Fluvial Fan (Hirst, J., 1991; Nichols, G., 2004; Donselaar, M. et al., 2008), and are mainly composed by different typologies of sandstone bodies included in a matrix of flood plain shale and silt (Fig. 2). The main objective of this work is creating a 3D model of the Huesca Fluvial Fan. This model will be built using the proposed methodology and by integrating several outcrops that represent various sectors of the fan. Studying outcropping ancient fluvial systems, like the Huesca Fluvial Fan, is of big interest to the oil industry. It gives an approach to the behaviour of similar buried fluvial reservoirs that are hard to image and to model accurately.<br>