Orogenic evolution of Western Europe controlled by lithosphere evolution

Processes driving orogenic styles and long-term isostatic versus dynamic support of the topography have been largely debated in domains of plate convergence. Tectonics of orogens reflect the interactions between mantle flow driving plates and the inherited rheology and composition of moving plates, which are however still strikingly ill-defined. A recent review of the evolution of the weak European lithosphere, based on geological, geophysical, petrological data, has shed lights on the role played by lithospheric mantle chemo-magmatic history and structure, which inherits past subduction/collision (e.g. Variscan) and rifting events (Tethys/Atlantic), on crust-mantle coupling, plate-mantle coupling, defining Alpine-type orogens. While the details of the Cenozoic topographic history of peri-Mediterranean orogens are understood to be controlled by the rheology and architecture of rifted margins combined with changing large-scale kinematic boundary conditions (e.g. Atlas, Betics, Pyrenees, Alps), their post-10 Ma, quaternary to current surface (Insar) and tectonic (seismic) evolution appears to illustrate increasing control by magmatism and flow at the asthenosphere-lithosphere limit as well as local thermal re-equilibration. We argue that isostatic processes in western Europe linked in part to long lithosphere evolution can be first-order drivers of the post-collisional evolution of the peri-Mediterranean orogenic belts and their still active surface and tectonic evolution.