Geognostics Earth Model (GEM)

Geognostics Earth Model (GEM) is a digital model of the Earth's crust for basin and petroleum exploration teams. It is aimed at questions such as: what type of basement floors a basin, what its structural framework is, where the continent-ocean boundary lies, when extension and sea-floor spreading took place, and where a basin sat in the past, so that play fairways can be correlated from one conjugate margin to the other.

GEM is built from the bottom up. Geognostics interprets basement terranes and structures as a spatially consistent present-day framework, then restores that framework through time with its proprietary global plate model, giving structurally constrained plate reconstructions back to the Triassic. The product is delivered in ArcGIS format, with the plate models in PaleoGIS and GPlates formats. It contains fully attributed global interpretations of basement terranes, oceanic domains, regional structures, continent-ocean transitions, tectonic events and basin phases, and basement and Paleozoic outcrop outlines, together with focus-area reconstructions and plate tectonic animations for regions including SE Asia, the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean, East Africa and the Atlantic margins.

The package also includes Geognostics' own high-resolution images of public-domain global gravity, magnetics and DEM datasets, filtered to enhance basin geology. Geognostics' 2020 flyer for Global SEEBASE, then released as a GEM module, gives the source of the global gravity and DEM layers as Sandwell and Smith (v28), whose marine gravity grid is derived from satellite radar altimetry.

Geognostics was formed in 2017 to develop GEM. The SE Asia part of the model was presented at the 2018 PESGB-SEAPEX conference, where its authors described mapping terranes and structures from published geological maps, digital elevation data, gravity, magnetics and seismic. Pricing is not published; enquiries go through the provider's contact form.