| Title | Integration of heat flow measurements and estimations in the construction of Mexico’s heat flow map |
|---|---|
| Authors | Prol-Ledesma, R M; Espinoza-Ojeda, O M; Iglesias, E R; Arango-Galván, C |
| Year | 2016 |
| Conference | European Geothermal Congress |
| Keywords | regional heat flow, principal component analysis, indirect estimations, similitude method |
| Abstract | Determination of the geothermal potential is linked to the heat transfer regime, which is related with the surface heat flow. Heat flow and temperature gradient data are very valuable to define the geothermal resources location. Presently, heat flow maps of Mexico lack detailed information due to the sparse available temperature gradient measurements. The Mexican Centre for Innovation on geothermal energy has carried studies to complete detailed maps of heat flow and thermal gradient that can be used to evaluate the geothermal resources of the country and to provide the location of favorable areas to developers. Here, we present the integration of various data sets that contain measurements of diverse geophysical and geochemical parameters that allow estimation of heat flow. Principal component analysis (PCA) was the method used to combine the diverse data layers, PCA are commonly used with spatial data to identify combinations of variables that best explain the variance in the multivariate data. In addition to reducing dimensionality and colinearity, the results obtained with PCA yield more robust and simpler regression models. In this work we include temperature gradient measurement in wells and silica concentration in water samples from springs and wells to create a more complete heat flow map for Mexico. All data are integrated to define the main anomalies that indicate the location of areas with high temperatures at relatively shallow depth. The obtained results show a good correlation in the location of high temperature anomalies in both data sets. |