Assessment of geothermal energy resources and in Armenia

Armenia is a landlocked country in the South Caucasus region, situated between Iran, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Turkey, with population of about 3.0 million. Since Neogene to Quaternary times, the territory of Armenia has been located in a continent-continent collision zone (i.e., collision of the Arabian and Eurasian plates) and exposed to transpressional tectonics resulting in widespread and long-lasting polygenetic and monogenetic volcanic activity.

The studies of spatial density of vents in Armenia (Weller et al., 2018, Sugden et al.  2021) demonstrate that Armenia is one of the densest clusters of Quaternary monogenetic volcanoes on Earth: in total, 516 volcanoes are mapped within the area of  ~30,000  km². Most of the monogenetic volcano clusters are oriented NW to SE, perpendicular to the major stress direction related to the movement of the Arabian plate from SW to NE.

Several active faults and potentially active and active volcanic systems exist in the country and many historical earthquakes have been recorded. The geology of Armenia with its volcanoes and active faults being potential source of hazards at the same time, has an important potential for geothermal energy, whilst much of Armenia’s current energy production is from imported fossil and nuclear fuel.

It is noteworthy, that hundreds of sources of thermal mineral waters exist in Armenia and most of them are found in close proximity to volcanic systems and active faults. Our preliminary geochemical studies of mineral waters aiming to apply geochemical thermometers to investigate the formation temperature of waters demonstrate several geothermal anomalies in Armenia. This contribution will present unified geological, geophysical, volcanological, geochemical database with selection of promising sites for further studies of geothermal energy potential of Armenia, and some preliminary results of application of ambient noise tomography (ANT) and satellite data.