Geological and Geophysical Studies Worldwide

The western Mediterranean sits at the collision zone between the African and Eurasian plates, making it one of the most tectonically complex regions on Earth, where processes like subduction, lithospheric delamination, and crustal shortening have shaped the landscape from the Atlas Mountains of North Africa to the Alboran Sea since the Mesozoic. Geophysicists and geodynamicists study this region to reconstruct how plates have moved, where ancient ocean floors have sunk into the mantle, and how those deep processes connect to the earthquakes and volcanic activity that still affect millions of people today. Central open questions include the precise geometry and fate of the subducting slab beneath the Alboran region, and how the tectonic evolution of the Atlas system relates to broader Mediterranean-scale dynamics — questions that researchers are addressing through seismic imaging, GPS geodesy, and increasingly detailed numerical models of mantle flow.

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Keywords

Western Mediterraneangeodynamicssubductiontectonic evolutionAtlas systemAlboran region