The crustal stress field of Germany: a refined prediction

Abstract Information about the absolute stress state in upper crust plays a crucial role planning and execution of, e.g., directional drilling, stimulation exploitation of geothermal hydrocarbon reservoirs. Since many these applications are related to sediments, we present refined geomechanical–numerical model for Germany with focus on sedimentary basins, able predict complete 3D tensor. The lateral resolution is 2.5 km, vertical 250 m. Our contains 22 units layers parameterized individual rock properties. results show an overall good fit magnitude data minimum ( S hmin ) maximum horizontal Hmax that used calibration. mean differences between calibration 4.6 MPa 6.4 . In addition, our predicted field shows agreement several supplementary in-situ from North German Basin, Upper Rhine Graben Molasse Basin.