SedDARE-IB: an open-access repository of sediment data for the Iberian Peninsula and its continental margins

Abstract

Sediments provide valuable information for geologists and geophysicists whenever they strive to understand, and reproduce, the geological evolution, lithology, rock properties, seismic response, and geohazards of a region. The analysis of sedimentary sequences is thus useful for the interpretation of depositional environments, sea-level change, climate change, and recognition of the sediments' source areas. By integrating sedimentary data into geophysical modeling, such interpretations are improved in terms of their accuracy and reliability. To further help our understanding of the Iberian Peninsula's geological evolution, geological resources, and geohazards, this work presents to the scientific community the SedDARE-IB data repository. This repository includes available data on the depth to the Base of the Cenozoic and Top of the Paleozoic stratigraphic markers for the Iberian Peninsula, the surrounding West Iberian Atlantic Margin and Western Mediterranean Neogene basins, or the acoustic basement as interpreted for the Valencia Trough and Alboran Mediterranean basins. As an example of the broad applicability of the data included in SedDARE-IB, we investigate how sediment thickness affects the depth to the 150 °C isotherm in specific basins, as commonly used in geothermal exploration. The calculated trend suggests that, given constant measured surface heat flow and thermal conductivity, the 150 °C isotherm becomes shallower as the sediment thickness increases, until a critical threshold value is reached for the latter. The SedDARE-IB database has been compiled thanks to a Portuguese-Spanish collaboration promoting open data exchange among institutions and research groups. SedDARE-IB is freely available at 10.20350/digitalCSIC/16277 (Torne et al., 2024), bringing opportunities to the scientific, industrial, and educational communities for diverse applications.