The Eastern Mediterranean area is the last active remnant of the subduction of the western Neotethys. Since the onset of the Jurassic opening of the Central Atlantic and its branch into the western Mediterranean, the Alpine Tethys, the region has been the place of convergence between Africa and Arabia on the one hand and Eurasia on the other. In addition, microcontinents that rifted off these major plates were trapped in the convergence zone. The resulting geological record contains evidence for multiple ocean-continent and (micro)continent-continent collisions, leading to ophiolite obduction, fold-thrust belts as well as exhumed high pressure - low temperature and/or low pressure - high temperature metamorphic terranes. The late-stage to present kinematics are largely controlled by the subduction of land-locked ocean remnants, giving rise to slab-rollback, extensional back arcs and lateral escape of terranes. All these geological events are part of a continuum and reuse the rheological and thermal structures left by the previous ones. This makes the area an ideal natural laboratory to link geological research to geodynamic and tectonophysical modeling efforts. The complexity of the transitions between subduction, collision and back arc processes can be deciphered and understanding can be gained on the competition between forces driving global plate tectonics and the kinematic forcing resulting from the heterogeneity of the crust and mantle.
The aim of the session is to bring together researchers from various disciplines to gain a better understanding of this region. We solicit studies from geophysics, geodesy, tectonics, stratigraphy, volcanology, geochronology, geomorphology, metamorphic and igneous petrology, as well as integrated studies and numerical/analogue models aimed at constraining the lithospheric structure, tectonics, geodynamic evolution and paleogeography of this region.