Alpenseminar by Benjamin Schmitz On the 27th of April we had a presentation on the active tectonics across the Alps by Benjamin Schmitz . To begin, we considered the tectonic setting across the Eastern Mediterranean by looking at the most recent Paleogeographic reconstruction of the Alpine orogeny. Recent Paleogeographic setting of the Alpine orogeny, after  Handy et al., 2015 The effect of the orogenesis linked to the indentation of the Adriatic Plate (brown on the above figure) into the European Plate (blue on the above figure) resulted in the formation of several faults and collisional zones. We may now consider: What tectonic effect remains? To better elaborate on this question, we may now consider the GPS velocities across Europe, Asia and North Africa, which is further associated to Nubia-Eurasia-Convergence: GPS-measured relative plate motions between the African and European/Eurasian Plates, after  Facenna et al., 2014 Important...

This year, the annual Große Exkursion (Big Excursion) of the Institut für Geowissenschaften (Institute for Geosciences) der Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena will undertake a trip focusing on structure and tectonics across the Alps. This will be led by Prof. Dr.  Kamil Ustaszewski , the head of Structural Geology at the  Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena . This trip will involve two transects across the Central and Eastern portion of the Alpine Mountains over a two-week period during Aug-Sept. Spectacular landscape of Marlomada in the Alps of  Italy The Alps represent a collisional orogen formed broadly during the convergence of the European and Adriatic continents. This process can be traced back as early as 250 million years ago. During this time Europe, North America and Africa were situated very close to each other in what was known as the Supercontinent Pangea. Underlying plate tectonic forces driven by deep convection of the Earth’s Mantle resulted i...