Alps structure and tectonics

1
Alps structure and tectonics
2
Austria
Switzerland
Italy
France
Tertiary Collision between Italian Peninsula and
Central Europe
3
Caspian Sea
Black Sea
UK
Austria
France
Spain
Italy
Adriatic Sea
Tunisia
Arabia

• Late Cretaceous, precollisional plate-tectonic
  geometry
• EW-directed contraction on strange Andian-style
  margin
• Often called Eoalpine orogeny

4
Western Alps lithotectonic elements

• European margin and basement
• Valais oceanophiolite and deep-sea sediments
• Brianconnais terranecontinental fragment
• Piemont-Liguria oceanophiolite and deep-sea
  sediments
• Apulian plateItaly

5
(No Transcript)
6
ECORS-CROP
7
NFP-20 WEST
8
NFP-20 EAST
9
(No Transcript)
10
Eastern Alps lithotectonic elements

• European margin and basement
• Neotethys oceanophiolite and deep-sea sediments
• Apulian plateThrust slices make up much of
  Austria

11
(No Transcript)
12
TRANSALP
13
EASTERN ALPS
14
Major structural elements, North to south

• North-vergent fold nappes soled by thrust faults,
  primarily metasedimentary rocks
• Basement cored fault uplifts
• Structural windows exposing ultra-high-pressure
  metamorphic rocks (Engadine and Tauern windows)
• Steeply dipping, orogen-parallel fault systems
• In western Alps, exposures of lower-crustal rocks
  of Apulian plate (Ivrea zone)

15
Alps are one of the type localities for escape
tectonicsMaterial extruded to east
16
Pattern of normal and strike-slip faults in
eastern Alps
17
One model for Tauern and Engadine windows is that
they are syncollosional metamorphic core complexes
East-west-directed simple-shear extension coupled
with north-south-directed folding