Subsurface Thermography and the Use of Temperature in Geosciences

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue of Geosciences aims to gather high-quality and original research articles, reviews and technical notes on the estimation of temperature in the subsurface (thermography) and the use of temperature to study or model subsurface processes at different scales ranging from shallow to deep systems.

Temperature distribution in the subsurface generally reveal important information on underlying processes at various scales such as geothermal systems, hydrothermal occurrences, river-groundwater exchanges, or geophysical fluid flow for instance. In addition, temperature can influence processes such as groundwater flow, storage of nuclear wastes or degradation of contaminants. Heat can also be used as a natural or induced tracer to understand the complexity and heterogeneity of the subsurface as well as exchange processes. The estimation of the temperature distribution and its assimilation in modeling is therefore of major importance for many different topics in geosciences. However, it remains challenging due to the inherent difficulty in estimating temperature at various scales and depths.

In the past decade, technologies such as distributed temperature sensing, electrical resistivity tomography or airborne thermographic surveys have been developed to help scientists and engineers to image the spatio-temporal distribution of temperature with a large spatial coverage and high resolution and, in combination with modelling, understand the often coupled processes at the origin of the observed anomalies. Nevertheless, many efforts remain to improve the analysis of the data and their integration in geothermal, geological, hydrological, geomechanical or hydrogeological models, among others.

Therefore, we would like to invite you to submit articles about your recent work (theoretical, experimental, numerical or methodological), with respect to the above topics and related topics:

• Improvement in existing techniques for temperature estimation
• Development of new techniques for temperature estimation
• Integration of spatially/temporally distributed temperature in models
• Use of temperature as a proxy/tracer for other subsurface processes
• Modeling heat flow and transport in the subsurface
• Modeling coupled processes where temperature plays a role

We also encourage you to send us a short abstract outlining the purpose of the research and the principal results obtained, in order to verify at an early stage if the contribution you intend to submit fits with the objectives of the Special Issue. We remain at your disposal for more information.

Prof. Thomas Hermans
Prof. Frédéric Nguyen
Guest Editors

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