Geodynamics

The Earth's surface is covered for more than two thirds by oceans. New crust is currently generated at mid-ocean ridges, a 60,000 km-long system of relief that runs all over the Earth's oceans. Mid ocean ridges are typically segmented by fracture zones whose length is ranging from 10s to several 100s km. Although the study of the oceans has been a milestone step in the development of plate tectonics, the processes leading to the birth of a new ocean and the origin and significance of oceanic fracture zones are still debated issues. These hot topics are currently under investigation in places like the Red Sea, where a new ocean is forming, and the central Atlantic, where long fracture zones are particularly well developed.
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An improved understanding of the long-term tectonic evolution of a region is required to frame the tectonic processes that are active and to assess their geological hazard. Because of the convergence between the African and Eurasian plates, a large variety of tectonic and volcanic processes are currently at work in the central Mediterranean region, where Italy is located. In many instances, these volcanic and tectonic activities occur at sea, and the structures that they originate are investigated through geophysical and geomorphological prospecting. By integrating these data with on-land geology, the long term evolution of the central Mediterranean region has been reconstructed. These palaeogeographic reconstructions can go back in time more than 100 millions of years, when Africa and Eurasia were separated by an oceanic branch, fringed by a vast realm of shallow water carbonate platforms.
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