Investigation of the thermal structure and radiogenic heat production through aeromagnetic data for the southeastern Aegean Sea and western part of Turkey

•Interpretation of magnetic data requires special attention for determining geological and geophysical settings.•Spectral analysis techniques are used to calculate the Curie Point Depth and heat flow of the region.•The correlation between the seismicity and thermal structure of the region play important role to determine thermal structure of the region.•Analytic signal method is a useful tool for mapping geological contact and the location of the causative bodies and mapping.•The western part of Turkey was characterized shallow Curie Point Depth values (9.8 km) and radiogenic heat production values were calculated as 0.21-0.51 μWm−3. This paper presents a correlation of thermal structure with seismic activity of southeastern Aegean Sea and western part of Turkey. The reduce to pole method was applied to magnetic data and the magnetic map obtained from reduce to pole correction was divided into 132 overlapping blocks with the sizes 90 × 90 km for estimating Curie Point Depth. These depths were varied from 9.8–19.5 km whereas heat flow values were found to be 50–125 mW m−2. Generally, the region is characterized by shallow Curie Point Depth values because of the continental extensional regime in N–S directions and subduction zone. Furthermore, radiogenic heat production values were calculated as 0.21−0.51 μWm−3 and the distribution of these values showed that high radiogenic heat values associated with the region where high heat flow values were seen. Seismotectonic activity in the region implies that the deep-focus earthquakes (̴180 km) occurred in the subduction zone and these earthquakes were characterized with high heat flow zone in the Aegean Sea. All the results have shown good agreement with geological and tectonic regime of the Aegean Region.