Meeting Program (Online)

Welcome to the 5th annual AlpArray scientific meeting to be held in Prague and co-hosted this year by the IGCAS in Prague and 4D-MB in Germany! This circular is to solicit registration and talk titles for the meeting, which we hope will bring together geoscientists from the 17 member states and 64 institutions making up the AlpArray consortium, as well as to everyone engaged in Alpine research that is relevant to AlpArray.

We are delighted that Jaroslava Plomerová and her colleagues at the IGCAS in Prague have renewed their offer to host the live meeting. However, if the pandemic intervenes again, the meeting will be conducted online, as in 2020. For practical reasons, we decided not to host a hybrid meeting.

The Scientific Program comprises three sessions with themes intended to bring together geoscientists working at the surface as well as on the crust and mantle in the Alpine chains. AlpArray has already moved beyond the seismological experiment (2016-2019) to the present stage where a wealth of data is being interpreted and debated. The idea of this meeting is to further interaction between specialists to shed light on processes governing the evolution of the Alps and their neighboring mountain belts and basins.

Preliminary program

9th November (afternoon):

Early-career scientists meeting (PhDs and early-career Postdocs) and early-career scientists dinner in Prague in the evening.

10th - 12th November:

Main meeting from Wednesday morning until Friday afternoon

Session themes

1. Connecting surface and mantle processes

Keynote speaker: Pierre Valla, University Grenoble Alpes (France)

The growth and demise of mountains reflect the interplay of processes affecting the surface and the dynamics of Earth’s crust and mantle during subduction and collision. We seek contributions that assess and compare the roles of these different processes, especially in light of new data from AlpArray. This session aims to improve our understanding of surface responses (e.g., changes in morphology, surface uplift, exhumation, source-sink paths) to variations in crustal and mantle structure and its evolution along the Alpine chains.

2. Contrasting images of deep structure from crust to mantle

Keynote speaker: Heidrun Kopp, University of Kiel (Germany)

The present-day structure of the Alpine chains as revealed by AlpArray is a key to understanding their orogenic evolution. This session focuses on the contrasting shapes and physical properties of subsurface rock bodies gleaned from a broad range of geophysical and geological observations. We welcome presentations on orogenic crust and mantle that reconcile diverse data sets and encourage contributions that emphasize first-order differences which seem (at first glance) to be irreconcilable.

3. Lithospheric motion and deformation on different time scales

Keynote speaker: Enrico Serpelloni, INGV (Italy)

Alpine structure has changed in space as well as in time, the fourth dimension. This session highlights the motion and deformation of the lithosphere in the Alpine-Mediterranean region on time scales ranging from months and days to millions of years. We are particularly interested in contributions that further our understanding of major changes in plate kinematics during the Alpine orogenesis and their effects on local and short-term motion history within Alpine mountains and basins.

Breakouts and submeetings

• Alpine Model Generators
• Eastern Alps
• Alps-Pannonian-Dinarides Junction (AA collaborative project, ESC group)
• Adria-Array/ORFEUS
• AlpArray Steering Committee
• 4D-MB Steering Committee

Best wishes,

Mark Handy ¹, Jaroslava Plomerová ², Emanuel Kaestle ¹, Peter McPhee ¹, György Hetényi ³, Claudia Piromallo ⁴, Nicolas Bellahsen ⁵, Pietro Sternai ⁶ (Program Committee)

 1 - Freie Univ. Berlin, 2 - IGCAS Prague, 3 - Univ. Lausanne, 4 - INGV Roma, 5 - Sorbonne Univ. Paris, 6 - DISAT Milano-Bicocco