TOPOALPS

Funded by: FWF, DFG, SNF

What is the history of topography in the Alps? That is the question to be investigated by the TOPO-Alps project. The rise of the Alps and the evolution of the alpine landscape are the consequence of disparate tectonic and climatic conditions. The processes of continental collision, although active over the last few tens of millions of years, have slowed in more recent times, particularly in the western Alps. Climate has varied greatly from the warm, wet conditions of three to five million years ago to the glacial cycles that have dominated climate and erosional processes in the last million years. The TOPO-Alps project will attempt to unravel these processes through a multi-disciplinary study incorporating geochemical methods for measuring paleo-elevation and modern erosion rates, sedimentological methods to estimate past erosion rates and patterns, tectonic field studies to establish tectonic uplift patterns and numerical models to link these processes to the Alpine topography.

Project Leader:

Professor Sean Willett

Department of Earth Sciences, ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland

Principal Investigators:

Professor Harald Fritz

Department of Earth Sciences, University of Graz, Graz, Austria

Dr. Frederic Herman

Department of Earth Sciences, ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland

Dr. Matthias Hinderer

Institüt für Angewandte Geowissenschaften, Technical University Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany

Professor Niel Mancktelow

Deparftment of Earth Sciences, ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland

Professor Andreas Mulch

Institüt für Geologie, Leipniz Universität Hannover, Hannover, Germany

Professor Fritz Schlunegger

Institute of Geological Sciences, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland

Professor Kurt Stüwe

Dept of Earth Science, University of Graz, Graz, Austria

Professor Friedhelm von Blanckenburg

German Research Centre for Geosciences, GFZ, Potsdam, Germany

Associated Partners:

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

Professor Rainer Wieler

Department of Earth Sciences, ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland