Analytical Treatment of Conductive Cooling in the Crust

Abstract

Numerous thermal problems occur in connection with tectonic and magmatic processes in the earth’s crust. It is customary to describe these processes, such as magmatic intrusions or volcanic events, as thermal equilibration processes based on heat conduction. Whereas tectonic events can hardly by treated without convective heat transport, intrusions or volcanic events can be modelled with thermal equilibration based on conduction only. In geological reality this assumption is too simple. For example, in the cooling of a magma body, water migrates through the country rock and transports a considerable amount of heat. However, simplifications can and must be made in the construction of models. In doing so one must treat the cooling process with enough accuracy to produce meaningful results while taking into consideration the errors resulting from these simplifications.