TOPO-WECEP - West Central European Platform

Part of the TOPO-EUROPE project, follow-up to EUCOR-URGENT

Brief decription (full details can be obtained from the TOPO-WECEP website)

Background

TOPO-WECEP evolved out of the transnational EUCOR-URGENT Project that was launched in January 1999, involved 25 universities and national institutions from France, Germany, Netherlands and Switzerland, and formed between 2000 and 2004 an ESF Life and Environmental Sciences Network. ESF funding of EUCOR-URGENT workshops was tied to the request that out of EUCOR-URGENT a European-scale project should be developed which addresses the implications of neotectonics for the human habitat. To this end, the TOPO-EUROPE project was developed that was launched under the leadership of Prof. S. Cloetingh in October 2005 with a Symposium held at Heidelberg. At the same time the International Lithosphere Program recognized TOPO-EUROPE as one of its Regional Coordinating Committees. Subsequently, EUCOR-URGENT was instrumental in activating the West and Central European Platform Natural Laboratory network of TOPO-EUROPE with which it planned to merge. EUCOR-URGENT used its 8th workshop held March 25-28th 2008 at Mt. St. Odile to activate the TOPO-WECEP Project with which it has now merged.

WHAT IS THE TOPO WECEP NATURAL LABORATORY?

The area addressed by the West and Central European Platform Natural Laboratory of TOPO-EUROPE (TOPO-WECEP) extends from 58N latitude to the Pyrenean and Alpine-Carpathian deformation fronts in the South and from Poland to the British Isles. It essentially covers the intraplate domain of the West and Central Europe that is floored by Caledonian and Variscan crust and that has undergone a complex Mesozoic and Cenozoic evolution involving rifting, wrench faulting and intraplate compressional deformation.