One of C Tech’s distributor’s in China asked us to explain how Earth Volumetric Studio could be used to model Caves.
The most straightforward approach is to use indicator kriging (e.g. indicator_geology module) and treat the cave as as if it were another material in the site lithology. The video below takes this approach. You can also apply adaptive_indicator_kriging to stratigraphic geologic models. In this way, if you have a site with stratigraphic geology, you can include a cave based on lithology data within the stratigraphic layers.
Other approaches are to model the cave as a volumetric excavation within any type of 3D volumetric grid using either:
- Binary lithology (values of 1 inside the cave and 0 outside the cave). You would format the binary data as an APDV or AIDV file and use krig_3d (turn off log processing), or
- Using a closed surface created outside of Earth Volumetric Studio (such as LIDAR) and then using surf_cut
I hope that this instructional video will be helpful. The application shown here will be included in the next release of Studio Projects.
Reed D. Copsey, President