SedDARE-IB: An open access repository of sediment data for Iberia and its continental margins

Abstract

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 to the interpretation of depositional environments, sea-level change, climate change, and to a recognition of the sediments' source areas, amongst other aspects. By integrating sedimentary data in geophysical modelling, such interpretations are improved in terms of their accuracy and reliability. To help our further understanding of Iberia's geological evolution, geological resources and geohazards, this work presents to the scientific community the SedDARE-IB data repository. This repository includes available data of the depth to the Base Cenozoic and Top Paleozoic stratigraphic markers for the Iberian Peninsula and surrounding Western Atlantic and Mediterranean Neogene basins, or to 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 ^oC isotherm at specific basins, as commonly used in geothermal exploration. The calculated trend suggests that, given constant measured surface heat flow and thermal conductivity, the 150 ^oC isotherm becomes shallower as a function of sediment thickness, until a critical threshold value is reached for the latter.SedDARE-IB database has been built thanks to a Portuguese-Spanish collaboration promoting open data exchange among institutions and research groups. SedDARE-IB is freely available at https://doi.org/10.20350/digitalCSIC/16277 (Torne et al., 2024) bringing opportunities to the scientific, industrial, and educational communities for diverse applications.