Thermo-Europe

Funded by: CNRS, DFG, CNR, NWO, MNSW, SNF

The topography of Europe’s mountains is the consequence of recent tectonic activity and climatically-modulated erosional processes. Our understanding of the coupling between climate and tectonics, which potentially represents the fundamental driver for mountain topography, remains partial. The Thermo-Europe project aims to test mechanisms for the coupling of climate and tectonics across Europe by combining acquisition of new thermochronologic data on denudation rates and sediment-flux from key areas, development of new methods to increase the resolution of the thermochronologic record, development of quantitative techniques that permit to extract information on relief development and transient exhumation rates, and investigation of the coupled effect of climate-induced and tectonic variability in exhumation rates.

Project Leader:

Professor Peter van der Beek

Laboratoire de Géodynamique des Chaînes Alpines, Observatoire des Sciences de l'Univers de Grenoble, Université Joseph Fourier de Grenoble I, Grenoble, France

Principal Investigators:

Professor Paul Andriessen

Department of Isotope Geochemistry, Faculty of Earth and Life Sciences, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Dr. Maria-Laura Balestrieri

CNR, Istituto di Geoscienze e Georisorse, Firenze, Italy

Dr. Charlotte Cederbom

Helmholtz Centre Potsdam, GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences, Potsdam, Germany

Dr. Piotr Krzywiec

Polish Geological Institute, Warsaw, Poland

Professor Onno Oncken

Helmholtz Centre Potsdam, GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences, Potsdam, Germany

Professor Cornelia Spiegel

Fachbereich Geowissenschaften, Universität Bremen, Bremen, Germany

Professor Sean Willett

Department of Earth Sciences, ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland

Associated Partners:

Dr. Luis Barbero

Departemento de Ciencias de la Tierra, Ciencias del Mar y Ambientales, Universidad de Cádiz, Cádiz, Spain

Dr. Ulrich Glasmacher

Institute of Earth Sciences, Universität Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany

Dr. Hugh Sinclair

Institute of Earth Sciences, School of Geosciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom