INTEGRATED GEOLOGICAL AND GEOPHYSICAL STUDIES OF STRUCTURE AND EVOLUTION OF CENTRAL EUROPE

In 1997, a sequence of ambitious controlled source geophysical experiments began. These experiments (POLONAISE’97, CELEBRATION 2002, ALP2002, and SUDETES 2003) produced 19,000 km of interlocking refraction profiles and were only been possible due a massive international cooperative effort. They, along with the BOHEMA, ALPASS, and PASSEQ teleseismic experiments, have and continue to provide exciting new insights into the structure and evolution of the lithosphere extending from Poland and the Czech Republic on the north to Croatia on the south. As reflected in structures within the Trans-European Suture Zone (TESZ), Bohemian massif, Eastern Alps and Carpathians, Pannonian basin, and Dinarides, Central Europe has experienced a complex tectonic history that includes three geologically recent periods of mountain building due to accretion of terranes during the Caledonian and Variscan orogenies and the complex collision and subduction that has produced the Alps and the Dinarides and is still active. In addition, extension has affected region on several occasions. First, the super-continent Rodinia broke-up near the Cambrian-Precambrian boundary and formed the rifted margin of southwest Baltica (East European craton-EEC); extension was widespread after the Variscan orogeny especially in the Polish-North German basin; and the Eger rift and Pannonian basin have experienced extension during the Cenozoic. The highlights of these experiments include: 1) Clear crustal thickening from the Pannonian basin across the Carpathians to the TESZ region that, together with the configuration of reflectors in the lithospheric mantle, suggest northward subduction of mantle underlying Carpathian-Pannonian plate under the European plate at some time during the Mesozoic or Cenozoic; 2) Convergence and extrusion in the Eastern Alps has produced a fragmentation of the lithosphere to east into three blocks, Europe (EU), Adria (AD) and the Pannonian fragment (PA); and 3) The rifted margin of the EEC is largely in tact suggesting that the Caledonian and Variscan orogenies in this area were relatively “soft”.