The surface heat flow of the Arabian Shield in Jordan #
Andrea Förster, Hans Jürgen Förster
Abstract #
Surface heat flow in southern Jordan was determined from a cluster of five boreholes, each reaching depths of up to 900 m and penetrating Paleozoic sedimentary rocks. The study area lies along the eastern margin of the Dead Sea Transform fault system and covers approximately 300 km². Continuous temperature logs were collected from each borehole and combined with laboratory measurements of thermal conductivity obtained from drill cores and surface rock samples to calculate heat flow values.
Methods #
Temperature profiles were obtained using continuous downhole logging in five boreholes within a 300 km² area in southern Jordan. Drill cores and surface samples from sedimentary and basement rocks were collected for thermal conductivity measurements in the laboratory. Conductive surface heat flow was calculated by combining temperature gradient data with corresponding thermal conductivity values for each lithological unit encountered in the boreholes.
Other #
The resulting dataset provides surface heat flow values for a region of the Arabian Plate where previous measurements were sparse or inconsistent. The calculated average heat flow is 60.3 ± 3.4 mW m⁻². These data contribute to regional thermal modeling and help constrain the thermal structure of the Arabian Shield in areas with limited tectonic reactivation.