Mesopotamia Foredeep Basin Mapped by Integrated 2D and 3D Cartographic Approach for Analysis of the Geomorphology and Geophysical Setting
Creators: name: Lemenkova, Polina
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2021
Subjects: subject: Iraq
subject: Mesopotamia
subject: Gravity
subject: Geomorphology
subject: GMT
subject: QGIS
subject: Data analysis
subject: Computer science
subject: Geography
subject: Earth science
subject: Geophysics
subject: FOS: Earth and related environmental sciences
subject: Oil
subject: Gas
subject: Mineral resources
subject: Middel East
subject: Mapping
subject: Data science
subject: Cartography
subject: Geoinformatics
subject: Information

description: The study presents the 2D and 3D mapping of the Mesopotamia Foredeep Basin, Iraq, and the adjacent areas using integrated cartographic approach of multi-source data visualization by Generic Mapping Tools (GMT), R language and QGIS. The geomorphological and geological mapping is based on multiple datasets containing raster and vector layers of the geological, geophysical, topographic, lithological and geodetic data captured from the open source repositories and resulted in 8 new maps. This study develops and presents an integrated cartographic method combining the use of various tools for different tasks in data visualization: QGIS for geological mapping, GMT for mapping geoid, gravity anomalies, 3D mesh visualization and 2D topographic mapping, R language (libraries 'raster' and 'tmap') for modelling relief (slope and aspect) of Iraq. The topography shows variation in data from minimum at -69 m below sea level in the Arabian Gulf, to maximum at 3754 m asl in the NE of Iraq. The map of geologic units of Iraq shows dominating types are Quaternary (Q) and Tertiary (T) that roughly divide the country into two segments (SW and NE). The Mesopotamia Foredeep Basin is dominated by Quaternary (Q). The 3D model of the Iraqi relief presented perspective view of the Mesopotamia Foredeep Basin and Zagros Mts with azimuth rotation at 165°/30°. The geoid undulations increase in NW direction: the lowest, negative values of geoid (-17 m) are over the Arabian Gulf which reflects the continuum of the Indian geopotential minimum. Maximal values of geoid reach 19 m in the SW and NW. The Mesopotamia Foredeep Basin has geoid variations ranging from -15 to 5 m showing correlation with topographic depressions. Free-air gravity model shows correlation of the values with topography proving general trend of the deficit of landmasses causing the negative or lower values in gravity. The values of Faye's gravity anomalies differ from minimum at -124.945 mGal to maximum at 327.724 mGal. The Mesopotamia Foredeep Basin has clearly negative values. The generated cartographic outputs (8 new maps) contribute to the increase of knowledge on the geomorphology, geology and distribution of geophysical anomalies of Iraq with a special focus on Mesopotamia Foredeep Basin. The technical research questions covered by this study relate to the cartographic data formatting, processing, integration and modelling using thematic multi-source datasets covering Iraq. The paper contributes both to the cartographic aspect of integrated mapping and to the regional studies of Iraq, Middle East and the Mesopotamia Foredeep Basin.