Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Calibrated basal heat flow grids for the 3D petroleum systems model of the Williston Basin, USA

Published by U.S. Geological Survey | Department of the Interior | Catalog Last Checked: May 05, 2026 at 07:42 PM | Dataset Last Updated: April 26, 2023 at 12:00 AM
Basal heat flow from the crystalline basement and lithospheric mantle into the sedimentary column is a required boundary condition in the petroleum systems model. The model uses two basal heat flow conditions that are described using two ASCII grids that show map variations in heat flow (mW/m2). The “BHF000_BasalHeatFlow_Calib.asc” grid describes the modern-day basal heat flow calibrated to, and derived from subsurface temperature data, including 24 high-resolution static temperature logs from the North Dakota Geological Survey and a large proprietary dataset (>1,000) of drill stem test (DST) and bottom hole temperatures (BHT) from boreholes throughout Montana and North Dakota provided by IHS Markit ® (2022). This grid is applied in the model from time steps 542 Ma to 97 Ma and again from 43 Ma to 0 Ma. The “BHF050_BasalHeatFlow_Laramide.asc” grid is transformed from the “BHF000_BasalHeatFlow_Calib.asc” grid by -10 mW/m2. The “BHF050_BasalHeatFlow_Laramide.asc” grid is applied from time steps 90 Ma to 50 Ma. The model interpolates time steps between assigned basal flow conditions. This is a child item of a larger data release titled "Data release for the 3D petroleum systems model of the Williston Basin, USA".

Resources

2 resources available

Find Related Datasets

data.gov

An official website of the GSA's Technology Transformation Services

Looking for U.S. government information and services?
Visit USA.gov