 | The Apuane Alps are representative of the rugged interior of the northern Apennines. This region is home to the Carrera marble, which has been quarried since the first century B.C. for construction and statues, such as Michelangelo's "David." The quarries and associated villages have risen upwards over the centuries into the highest parts of the range. |
Yale geologist leading international
Several faculty in the Department of Geology and Geophysics are involved in a new international project called RETREAT to study tectonic processes in the Apennine Mountains of northern Italy.
Yale is the lead institution for this project. The research is funded by a five-year, $3 million award from the Continental Dynamics Program, a highly competitive program at the National Science Foundation. There are over 40 scientists involved, including investigators from seven U.S. universities, and collaborators from Italy, Canada, the Czech Republic, France and Switzerland.
The RETREAT project highlights a growing trend in the earth sciences toward integrated multidisciplinary studies.
"We have been given an exciting opportunity to bring a broad range of experience and methods to focus on a high-profile science problem," says Mark Brandon, professor of geology and geophysics and the leader of the project. "Even within our own department, we have seen benefits from the cross-disciplinary research fostered by this project." The other Yale faculty involved in RETREAT are Professor Jeffrey Park and Assistant Professor Peter Reiners.
The Italian Peninsula was formed about five million years ago as the Apennine Range started to emerge from the Mediterranean. This young mountain range is still growing due to continued collision between two tectonic plates, which underlie Italy and the Adriatic Sea. Thrust faults and folded strata on the east side of the Apennines provide clear evidence of active east-west shortening, as expected for a tectonic collision. At the same time, the west side of the range is being pulled apart by normal faults. This active east-west extension has created many grabens or valleys, which can be viewed as tectonic "stretch marks," according to Brandon. The Tuscan city of Florence sits in one of these faulted valleys.
The goal of RETREAT is to determine why there is active extension within parts of this tectonic collision, says Brandon. This paradox of syn-collisional extension is widely recognized in mountain belts around the world, but the northern Apennines represent the best "natural laboratory" to study this problem, he notes.
This fall marks the beginning of two large geophysical experiments with seismometers and global positioning system (GPS) instruments installed at numerous sites in the rugged landscape of the Apennines.
Brandon notes that "the experiments we are doing are comparable to large coordinated experiments in physics." For example, the research includes a large passive seismic experiment to image the interior of the Earth to a depth of several hundred kilometers. GPS receivers are being used to measure movements of the Earth's surface to a precision of less than one millimeter per year.
These experiments are complemented by geologic studies which will provide information on deformation in the mountain range at the million-year time scale. Results will be tested against the predictions of large-scale numeric modeling.
-- By Jacqueline Weaver
T H I S
In Focus: Geology and Geophysics
study of Italian mountain range
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