Beschreibung: TOPO-EUROPE addresses the 4-D topographic evolution of the orogens and intra-plate regions of Europe through a multidisciplinary approach linking geology, geophysics, geodesy and geotechnology. TOPO-EUROPE integrates monitoring, imaging, reconstruction and modelling of the interplay between processes controlling continental topography and related natural hazards. Until now, research on neotectonics and related topography development of orogens and intra-plate regions has received little attention. TOPO-EUROPE initiates a number of novel studies on the quantification of rates of vertical motions, related tectonically controlled river evolution and land subsidence in carefully selected natural laboratories in Europe. From orogen through platform to continental margin, these natural laboratories include the Alps/Carpathians–Pannonian Basin System, the West and Central European Platform, the Apennines–Aegean–Anatolian region, the Iberian Peninsula, the Scandinavian Continental Margin, the East-European Platform, and the Caucasus–Levant area. TOPO-EUROPE integrates European research facilities and know-how essential to advance the understanding of the role of topography in Environmental Earth System Dynamics. The principal objective of the network is twofold. Namely, to integrate national research programs into a common European network and, furthermore, to integrate activities among TOPO-EUROPE institutes and participants. Key objectives are to provide an interdisciplinary forum to share knowledge and information in the field of the neotectonic and topographic evolution of Europe, to promote and encourage multidisciplinary research on a truly European scale, to increase mobility of scientists and to train young scientists. This paper provides an overview of the state-of-the-art of continental topography research, and of the challenges to TOPO-EUROPE researchers in the targeted natural laboratories

Beschreibung: Terrestrial records from the Canadian Arctic Archipelago indicate that a temperate and moist climate prevailed during the Pliocene, i.e., before the intensification of Northern Hemisphere glaciations, but the controlling factors causing these conditions remains elusive. Here we present marine seismic reflection evidence of contiguous kilometer-scale sedimentary drifts, or contourites, buried below the West Greenland shelf, which relates high-latitude Pliocene warmth to intense geostrophic currents along the eastern Baffin Bay margin. Seismic to borehole correlation indicates that enhanced current-induced deposition began during the middle Miocene, ca. 17–15 Ma, and terminated during the late Pliocene onset of global cooling. The transition from along-slope sediment transport to trough-mouth fan progradation designates the onset of Greenland Ice Sheet glaciers advancing across the continental shelf and coincides with increasing iceberg productivity in Baffin Bay and the Nordic Seas from 3.3 to 2.7 Ma. Our results suggest that the Baffin Bay–West Greenland margin formed a late Neogene passageway for persistent ocean boundary currents, and we infer that the Pliocene high-latitude warmth was to a significant extent caused or enhanced by advection of subtropical heat and moisture to the Arctic regions. Attenuation of the poleward heat flux conveyed by the paleo–current system may have been critical for allowing glacial buildup in the Canadian Arctic and northern Greenland during the late Pliocene. We further surmise that vertical tectonic adjustments of the continental margin played a role in this attenuation, which eventually caused the demise of meridional ocean circulation through Baffin Bay.

Beschreibung: Tectonic models predict that, following breakup, rift margins undergo only decaying thermal subsidence during their post-rift evolution. However, post-breakup stratigraphy beneath the NE Atlantic shelves shows evidence of regional-scale unconformities, commonly cited as outer margin responses to inner margin episodic uplift, including the formation of coastal mountains. The origin of these events remains enigmatic. We present a seismic reflection study from the Greenland Fracture Zone – East Greenland Ridge (GFZ-EGR) and the NE Greenland shelf. We doc- ument a regional intra-Miocene seismic unconformity (IMU), which marks the termination of syn-rift deposition in the deep-sea basins and onset of: (i) thermo-mechanical coupling across the GFZ, (ii) basin compression, and (iii) contourite deposition, north of the EGR. The onset of coupling across the GFZ is constrained by results of 2-D flexural backstripping. We explain the thermo-mechanical coupling and the deposition of contourites by the forma- tion of a continuous plate boundary along the Mohns and Knipovich ridges, leading to an accelerated widening of the Fram Strait. We demonstrate that the IMU event is linked to onset of uplift and massive shelf-progradation on the NE Greenland margin. Given an estimated middle-to-late Miocene (ca. 15-10 Ma) age of the IMU, we speculate that the event is synchronous with uplift of the East and West Greenland margins. The correlation between margin uplift and plate-motion changes further indicates that the uplift was triggered by plate tectonic forces, induced perhaps by a change in the Iceland plume (a hot pulse) and/or by changes in intra-plate stresses related to global tectonics.

Beschreibung: Tectonic models predict that following breakup, rift margins undergo only decaying thermal subsidence during their postrift evolution. However, postbreakup stratigraphy beneath the NE Atlantic shelves shows evidence of regional-scale unconformities, commonly cited as outer margin responses to inner margin episodic uplift, including the formation of coastal mountains. The origin of these events remains enigmatic. We present a seismic reflection study from the Greenland Fracture Zone-East Greenland Ridge (GFZ-EGR) and the NE Greenland shelf. We document a regional intra-Miocene seismic unconformity (IMU), which marks the termination of synrift deposition in the deep-sea basins and onset of (i) thermomechanical coupling across the GFZ, (ii) basin compression, and (iii) contourite deposition, north of the EGR. The onset of coupling across the GFZ is constrained by results of 2-D flexural backstripping. We explain the thermomechanical coupling and the deposition of contourites by the formation of a continuous plate boundary along the Mohns and Knipovich ridges, leading to an accelerated widening of the Fram Strait. We demonstrate that the IMU event is linked to onset of uplift and massive shelf progradation on the NE Greenland margin. Given an estimated middle to late Miocene (~15–10Ma) age of the IMU, we speculate that the event is synchronous with uplift of the east and west Greenland margins. The correlation between margin uplift and plate motion changes further indicates that the uplift was triggered by plate tectonic forces, induced perhaps by a change in the Iceland plume (a hot pulse) and/or by changes in intraplate stresses related to global tectonics.