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Regional variations in Australian heat flow

Created 09/01/2026

Updated 09/01/2026

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Twenty new heat-flow values from widely separated sites on the Australian continent are presented. These are combined with published land and marine data in the area 90-170°E, 0.45°S to produce contour maps of heat flux in the region. For most of the area the heat flux is uniform, and low (30-60 mW m^-2), presumably because both the oceanic and continental crusts are comparatively old. However, in eastern Australia the heat flow is significantly higher (~ 70-100 mW m^-2). The new data reinforce this pattern with values from the Canning Basin and Pilbara Block falling in the range 40-50 mW m^-2, and those in Queensland and New South Wales in the range 70-100 mW m^-2. The data distribution is still not good enough to delineate accurately the boundaries of the high and low heat-flow regimes, and hence define the boundary of possible Precambrian craton(s) where no outcrop is present. There is a strong positive correlation between heat flow and P-wave travel-time residuals, and a negative correlation between heat flow and upper-mantle velocity. There is no obvious relationship between heat flow and crustal thickness.

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Field Value
Title Regional variations in Australian heat flow
Language eng
Licence Not Specified
Landing Page https://data.gov.au/data/dataset/1ccc4575-aef5-4173-a84e-5f09e6ab302a
Contact Point
Geoscience Australia Data
clientservices@ga.gov.au
Reference Period 20/04/2018
Geospatial Coverage
Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors
{
  "coordinates": [
    [
      [
        100.0,
        -45.0
      ],
      [
        165.0,
        -45.0
      ],
      [
        165.0,
        -8.0
      ],
      [
        100.0,
        -8.0
      ],
      [
        100.0,
        -45.0
      ]
    ]
  ],
  "type": "Polygon"
}
Data Portal Geoscience Australia

Data Source

This dataset was originally found on Geoscience Australia "Regional variations in Australian heat flow". Please visit the source to access the original metadata of the dataset:
https://ecat.ga.gov.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/csw/dataset/regional-variations-in-australian-heat-flow2