1.0 Introduction
Impact craters are important because they are responsible for massive
extinctions, can serve as natural laboratories for studying broad
geological processes and are associated with ore bodies and hydrocarbon
deposits (French, 2004; Grieve and Masaitis, 1994; Marvin, 1999 ).
Increasing interest in space exploration has compelled a renewed
interest in understanding meteorite impact events. One major use of
impact crater studies in space exploration is estimating the age of the
surface of a solid planetary body (Michel and Morbidelli, 2012 ).
Most solid planetary bodies and satellites have a history of accumulated
impact craters on their surfaces. These craters come in many sizes. The
age of a surface is related to the number of impacts it has endured,
assuming a constant impact rate across time. The total number of craters
may therefore be used to determine how old a surface is if it is
feasible to estimate the rate of crater creation on that surface.
Compared with Mars, which has over 300,000 impact craters with at least
1 km diameter, only 188 have been identified on Earth so far
(Hergarten and Kenkmann, 2015 ). The lower number of discovered
craters is obviously due to the Earth’s weathering process, which
presents a challenge to identifying craters on Earth. But there has been
an increasing amount of research dedicated to investigating impact
craters worldwide. Progressive research has focused on distinguishing
impact craters from their surroundings (Glikson and Haines, 2005;
Koeberl and Anderson, 1996; Koeberl and MacLeod, 2002 ). Previous work
has established that most of the geological characteristics associated
with impact craters are not unique, e.g.,
their generally circular shape,
circular deformation pattern, extensive fracturing and brecciation,
circular gravity and magnetic anomalies, and the presence of sizable
igneous rock units (French and Koeberl, 2010 ). Other conventional
processes like tectonic deformation, salt-dome formation, volcanic
eruption, or internal igneous activity can also generate such geological
characteristics. Distinct identifying signatures are shock-metamorphic
effects which are particular outcomes of an impact’s shock waves(Grieve, 1991; Stöffler and Langenhorst, 1994 ). Continuous
research in identifying formerly unrecognised impact craters and their
evolution is critical. However, a cursory look at the literature shows
that the distribution of research output and researchers participating
in impact crater research is not uniformly distributed.
In Ghana, West Africa is one of the youngest well-preserved mid-sized
Impact Craters known as the Bosumtwi Impact Crater. According toKarp et al. (2002 ), the Bosumtwi Impact Crater is “more
comparable in form and impact to lunar and planetary craters than other
terrestrial craters”. This paper explores the current state of
geophysical research in the Bosumtwi Impact Crater, focusing on
analysing what part has been played in this research by local
researchers. Specifically, this study will seek to answer the following
questions concerning the Bosumtwi Impact Crater: what is the yearly
distribution of publications on geophysical investigations; what is the
country distribution of publications on geophysical investigations; what
is the funding distribution of publications on geophysical
investigations; which geophysical methods have been applied and how were
they utilised? In this paper, our principal focus has been on
understanding the contribution of researchers in-country to geophysical
research in an obviously scientifically important place.
The study is organised into the following sections: Section 1 covers the
study’s introduction. Section 2 outlines the geophysical methods used in
discovering impact craters. Section 3 provides information on the
systematic review methodology used in this study. Section 4 outlines the
results of this study, including publication distribution yearly,
publication distribution on a country basis, publication distribution on
a funding basis and the specific applications of geophysics in the
Bosumtwi Impact Crater. Sections 5 and 6 discuss the findings and
present the study’s conclusions.