Reclus Tectonics Databases: East Africa

Any geological exploration of the Earth ultimately requires understanding its structure and crustal geometry and composition - its architecture - whether we are searching for battery minerals, metals, water, hydrocarbons, carbon storage reservoirs, or geothermal. Although regional and local databases are available, especially in the commercial world, there is no systematic, global suite of databases for crustal architecture and structure accessible by the entire scientific community. This is why we have built Reclus. The Reclus suite includes databases of the following: (1) structural elements, which define the three-dimensional geometry of the rock volume, including folds and faults; (2) 'crustal' facies describing the geometry and composition/rheology of the lithosphere; (3) igneous features; and (4) geodynamics, representing the dominant thermo-mechanical processes acting on the lithosphere. The datasets provided here are for East Africa and are described in detail in Markwick et al., (Accepted for publication). Interpretations were made between 2017-2021 using a range of primary and secondary sources. These input datasets include gravity and magnetic data, Landsat imagery, radar data, published well and seismic information, geological maps and published papers, MSc and Ph.d. theses, and reports. The databases are compiled and managed using ESRI's ArcGIS software and are underpinned by a comprehensive data management system and systematic attribution. In this resource, the databases are provided as ESRI shapefiles. Shapefiles are the ESRI data format that can be used most widely, including the following: different versions of ArcGIS; QGIS, Schlumberger's Petrel; and Google Earth. Reclus enables commercial explorationists to place their internal data and expertise within a systematically built, regional context. For students and academics, Reclus is designed to provide a starting point for further research - it is so much easier to take an existing resource, question it, disagree with it, change it, and improve it. Reclus is named after the French geographer Jacques Élisée Reclus”, who in the late 19th century compiled and analyzed physical and human geographic data for every continent. This was published in his 19 volume work, La Nouvelle Géographie Universelle, la Terre et Les Hommes, which included some of the first maps illustrating the global distribution of volcanoes and mountains.