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Geological Society, London, Special Publications; 1998; v. 141; p. 223-239;
DOI: 10.1144/GSL.SP.1998.141.01.14
© 1998 Geological Society of London

A novel approach for constraining heat flow histories in sedimentary basins

K. Gallagher1 & D. W. Morrow2

1 T. H. Huxley School of Environment, Earth Sciences and Engineering, Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, Prince Consort Road, London, SW7 2BP, UK
2 Geological Survey of Canada, Institute of Sedimentary and Petroleum Geology, 3303 -33rd Street N.W., Calgary, Alberta, T2L 2A7, Canada

We examine the application of a novel inversion procedure to determine a heat flow history from down-hole thermal indicator data from 2 wells in northern Canada. The approach is based around Occam’s razor in that we attempt to constrain the simplest heat flow history consistent with the observed data. Simple models are defined in terms of the variation about the present day heat flow and the inverse problem is to minimise a combined function of the data misfit, weighted by the individual error on each observation, and the model complexity.

The results obtained for the 2 wells, Pan Am Beaver River YT G-01 and Imperial Island River No. 1 in the Liard Basin, agree with heat flow histories determined from forward modelling. However, the inversion approach discussed provides useful estimates of model resolution and sensitivity. The effect of variations in the data errors and the nature of the forward model are also considered. As we expect intuitively, the quality of the solution depends directly on the quality of the input data and forward model.





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