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Bouguer anomalies

This map shows the Bouguer anomalies over the whole of Germany and surrounding areas in a detailed but still clear way. The geographical reference is formed by WGS 84 using a Lambert conformal conicial projection with two equidistant reference circles of latitudes at 48°40' and 52°40'.

Bouguer anomaly map of Germany 1: 1,000,000

Bouguer anomalies, GRS80, 0 m amsl 
authors: Peter Skiba,Gerald Gabriel, Reiner Scheibe, Olaf Seidemann, Detlef Vogel, Charlotte Krawczyk, Christa Vinnemann

This map shows the Bouguer anomalies over the whole of Germany and surrounding areas, in a detailed but still clear way. The geographical reference is formed by WGS 84 using a Lambert conformal conical projection with two equidistant reference circles of latitudes 48°40' and 52°40'.

The data material is primarily derived from the geophysics information system of the Leibniz Institute for Applied Geophysics. This collection contains more than 275 000 gravimetry points recorded in recent decades by state bodies, research institutes and industry. The data is supplemented by measuring points outside of the country made available by some partner institutes and the Bureau Gravimétrique International (around 70,000 points). The distribution of the points across the mapped area varies considerably although the average point separation in Germany is around 2 to 3 km.

All of the data were re-examined and reduced again taking into consideration modern reference systems, improved terrain models, today's computer power, and the growing interest in international comparability. Faults were identified in a multi-stage quality assurance process and not used in the further processing. The subsequent recalculation of all of the reduction terms (normal gravity, plane reduction, Bouguer plate, terrain correction) was oriented on modern international standards. High resolution national and global digital topography models were available to calculate the topographic corrections.

The resulting gravity anomalies vary across the mapped area from -170 mGal in the Alps to +40 mGal around the gravity low in the Magdeburg area. In the mapped area they form local structures such as the salt diapirs of north Germany, as well as regional units such as the Rhine Graben. Previous inconsistencies along the former German-German border have been removed. Anomalies can be used to interpret the geological structure of the Earth's crust.