A GIS Analysis of Temperature in the Australian Crust

Abstract

Research over the last 10 years has indicated that Australia has a significant geothermal energy resource. Regions of high crustal temperature at depths ≤5km may be economic targets for hot dry rock technology. A new database of temperature measurements made in 5722 wells across Australia has been used to construct improved maps of the spatial distribution of temperature in the Australian crust. The new database, Austherm04, builds upon the earlier work of Somerville et al. (1994) by greatly improving data quality control and by including temperature data from a further 1430 wells. Whilst there has been some enhancement of the overall spatial coverage when compared with the earlier work, the bulk of the new data are still largely clustered within the same provinces that