Perspectives on the integrated sedimentary basin analysis

This paper attempts to figure out new perspectives for the future sedimentary basin studies on the basis of the historical overview and recent study trends on this field. Genetic viewpoint on sediments has developed prominently during the last thirty years, being affected by the sedimentary facies and sequence stratigraphic concepts. Understanding the origin of sediments and sedimentation controlling factors in basin filling is an important point in sedimentary basin analysis because it makes possible for us to conduct precise sedimentological studies including the past environment analysis and hydrocarbon exploration. Recent scientific research and petroleum exploration projects tend to require multidisciplinary approaches because of its usefulness for the research collaboration. The genetic viewpoint on sediments plays an important role to integrate the wide-ranging results derived from multiple study fields as a core of multidisciplinary approaches. Not only multiple “study fields” but also “analytical and modeling methods” for sedimentary basins are subject to the multidisciplinary approaches. In addition to the conventional backward and deterministic modeling methods of sediments such as facies and sequence stratigraphic models, forward, quantitative and stochastic modeling methods are recently developing. Depositional experiments and process simulations determined by multiple parameters provide important information on the relationships between sediments and sedimentation controlling factors. Stochastic simulations are also being introduced with the geostatistical concepts for sediment distribution analysis. Recent developments on the 3-D seismic and well-log technologies provide innovative solutions on the distributions and properties of sediments through seismic attribute, seismic facies and petrophysical data sets.It is expected that the developments of the genetic viewpoint on sediments and the multidisciplinary approaches for study fields and analytical methods will bring a new synergy in the future integrated sedimentary basin analysis.