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Contenuto archiviato il 2022-12-23

An international study of the lithosphere in the north-east European Precambrian craton (a co-venture of ILP/ESF-project EUROPROBE and IGCP-371 COPENA)

Obiettivo



EUROBRIDGE is an interdisciplinary project to study the structure and formation of ancient Precambrian lithosphere in the north-eastern half of Europe. The overall objective is to understand the geodynamic processes that created this lithosphere and the attendant patterns of distribution of geological resources and dangers. Precambrian plate tectonics may differ from their recent equivalents because the thermal and all kinetic regimes may have been different and because of the irreversible chemical differentiation of the planet.

Specific problems addressed involve the assembly of the east European craton from several once independent crustal segments, the nature of the intersegment boundaries and of late Proterozoic and Phanerozoic giant rifts, and the geodynamic role of large granulite belts that outline a large Proterozoic accretional/collisional structure facing toward the present west. These investigations are concentrated in a transect stretching from Sweden across the Baltic Sea to Belarus and Ukraine. This transect also ties together the Baltic and Ukrainian Precambrian shields which are the only places where the oldest crust of Europe is exposed for direct examination. The current covers the legs of the profile extending from north-west Belarus to southern Ukraine. Interdisciplinary study is important to establish mutual constraints. While a deep seismic sounding profile is a mainstay to elucidate lithospheric structure, isotopic work provides the fourth dimension of the time and describes the interaction of mantle and crustal materials. Different geodynamic processes each have their own specific signatures in metamorphic regimes and melt formation. Studies of pressure-temperature conditions and igneous geochemistry are critically important. Additional geophysical information is provided by magnetotellurics and gravity, while palaeomagnetism checks the spatial interrelation of crustal segments throughout time.

The principal expected result is a better understanding of the structure of ancient Europe which has major consequences in applied science, as patterns of ancient geological processes still determine the present patterns of occurrence and distribution of many geological resources and the incidence of seismic, waste-storage and other environmental dangers. Other major results will concern the character of ancient, Precambrian continental crust, the nature of the relationships between various component crustal segments in present continents, the nature of collisional and accretional processes of crustal growth, the place of Europe in the global plate-tectonic context, and the very nature of plate-tectonic processes in the Precambrian. There is a reason to expect a wealth of specific results in the different fields of geoscience and new information that relates these different fields to each other.

Invito a presentare proposte

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Meccanismo di finanziamento

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Coordinatore

Lund University
Contributo UE
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Indirizzo
Solvegatan 13
22362 Lund
Svezia

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Partecipanti (6)