Geothermal Renewable Energy Prospects of The African Continent Using GIS

Abstract

Geothermal energy potential is identified through the deep investigation of geological, geothermal, and geophysical information over a small area; however, this task is both expensive and complex. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) can integrate different types of data (or thematic layers) over large regions and use them to identify regions of high geothermal potential. In this study, a GIS tool is used to construct the first regional-scale geothermal potential map of Africa from different datasets. The key objective of this study is to estimate the geothermally promising areas within Africa by integrating geological thematic layers (rock units and faults), geophysical layers (heat flow derived from aeromagnetic data and seismicity), and geothermal layers (hot springs and volcanoes) within the GIS database. A weighted overlay technique within the GIS environment is applied to these data to generate the geothermal potential map. The result shows 14 regions with a high geothermal favorability index. The geothermal potential map of Africa is useful for targeting and exploring new geothermal renewable energy sites and can reduce exploration costs and pinpoint investigation areas during preliminary geothermal studies.

Modeling of Continental Normal Fault Earthquakes

“…(2020), Chousianitis and Konca (2021), Elbarbary et al. (2022), GCMT catalog (https://www.globalcmt.org/), Heidarzadeh et al. (2021), Karakostas et al.…”

“…Here, we compare the parameters of observed earthquakes of the East African Rift System (EARS) versus the results of our models. Since the heat flow records in the areas of observed earthquakes are often sparse or show a wide range of values in the vicinity of the fault (http://heatflow.org/), we use the heat flow model of Africa based on Curie point depth (Elbarbary et al., 2022). There were 12 normal fault earthquakes with a magnitude above Mw6.0 which occurred in the EARS since 1976 (https://www.globalcmt.org/).…”