TopoMed

Funded by: DFG, IRCSET, CNR, FCT, CICYT

The motion between Africa and Europe in the western Mediterranean region has been taken up by subduction. Over the last 30 million years the location of the subduction zone has migrated from present-day southern France and eastern Iberia to the south-southeast towards North Africa and present-day Italy, with sideward expansions to form the Gibraltar and  Calabria arcs. This process is now coming to an end. TopoMed investigates the intriguing processes accompanying these last stages and the possibility that a new subduction zone is being created along the North African margin. The results of this project are important for assessing the future geohazards potential of the region.

Project leader:

Professor Marinus Wortel

Department of Earth Sciences, Faculty of Geosciences, University of Utrecht, Utrecht, Netherlands

Principal Investigators:

Professor Claudio Faccenna

Dipartimento Scienze Geologiche, Istituto di Geologia Ambientale e Geoingegneria, Università di Roma Tre, Roma, Italy

Professor Manuel Fernandez

Departamento de Geofísica y Tectónica, Institut Earth Sciences 'J. Almera' – CSIC, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones, Científicas (CSIC), Barcelona, Spain

Dr. Ingo Grevemeyer

Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences, Christian-Albrechts-University Kiel, IFM-GEOMAR, Kiel, Germany

Professor Alan G. Jones

School of Cosmic Physics, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, Dublin, Ireland

Professor Pedro Terrinha

Department of Marine Geology /Departamento de Geologia Marinha,Portugal

Associated Partners:

Professor Olivier Bellier

Université Montpellier II, Montpellier, France

Professor Christophe Larroque

Géoazur, Valbonne, France