Heat flow from the West African Shield

The heat flow over Precambrian shields is generally lower than over other continental provinces. Previous observations at 9 sites of the West African shield have shown that heat flow ranges from 20 mW m/sup -2/ in Niger to 38-42 mW m/sup -2/ in Liberia, Ghana and Nigeria. Since some of these values are lower than expected for Precambrian shields, it is important to find out whether or not they are representative of the entire shield before trying to derive its thermal structure. In this paper, we present new heat flow determinations from seven sites of the West African shield. These indicate that the surface heat flow is comparable with that of other Precambrian shields in the world.