In continental heat-flow studies, sedimentary basins are usually avoided because of difficulties in obtaining thermal conductivity measurements and because temperature gradients may contain advective signals caused by moving ground water. These problems are superimposed in the Denver and Williston basins where complex geothermal gradients derive both from large contrasts among thermal conductivities of strata and from regional ground-water flow. Detailed heat-flow studies may solve these problems and provide data relevant to basin hydrology: the occurrence and nature of geothermal resources, oil source rock maturation and secondary migration of petroleum, and formation and deposition of strata-bound ores.

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