FOLDING IN THE EUROPEAN ALPS AS SEEN FROM THE AIR

The Geology of the Alps has interested Earth Scientists for centuries. No other mountain belt on Earth has been mapped, studied and interpreted in this much detail. Despite this long study, many questions have remained unanswered until recently and substantial progress in the geological interpretation has still been made in the last decade (Schmid et al., 2004; Froitzheim et al., 2010; Handy et al., 2010).

However, although many research articles and a series of books are dedicated to the geology of the Alps, no pictorial illustration of the spectacular geology and geomorphology of this fascinating mountain belts exists. For this contribution several years were spent photographing the entire mountain belt from the air. A data base of almost 10000 images of the geology of the Alps are now available through the website www.alpengeologie.org and a book with the most beautiful images has been published. This contribution presents highlights of this catalogue focusing on images of the most spectacular fold patterns in the range.