Influence of Landscape Coverage on Measuring Spatial and Length Properties of Rock Fracture Networks: Insights from Numerical Simulation

摘要: Natural fractures are ubiquitous in the Earth’s crust and often deeply buried subsurface. Due to difficulty accessing their three-dimensional structures, study of fracture network geometry is usually achieved by sampling two-dimensional (2D) exposures at surface through outcrop mapping or aerial photograph techniques. However, measurement results can be considerably affected coverage forests other plant species over exposed patterns. We quantitatively such effects using numerical simulation. consider scenario nominally isotropic natural systems represent them 2D discrete models governed fractal length scaling parameters. The groundcover modelled as random patches superimposing onto localisation total landscape further investigated. dimension exponent covered networks measured compared with those original non-covered show that increases reduced increased patches, which more evident for dominated very large (i.e. small underlying exponent). seems have a minor impact on measurement. research findings this paper important implications field survey statistical analysis geological systems.