To investigate the recent changes in the relief of the Iberian Peninsula and their causes is an unfinished challenge of the Spanish scientific community.
The great social significance of this work involves climatic change, assessment of natural resources, and future risks which could be avoided.
The ambitious project ‘Geosciences in Iberia: Integrated studies of topography and 4D assessment. Topo-Iberia’, an initiative that will involve more than 103 doctoral researchers from 10 different groups, will provide for the first time a solution to the demand from the Spanish scientific community of establishing a scientific-technological framework to conduct integrated multidisciplinary geoscientific studies in Spain.
This project will mean the deployment of an unprecedented temporal seismic broad-band network of in Spain, which will consist of at least 80 seismic stations located 50-60 kilometres apart from each other. This signifies simultaneous and homogeneous coverage in different regions. Top-Iberia will also create the largest GPS network in Spain.
The Ministry of Science and Education has granted 4.5 million euros to fund this important study within the last Consolider-Ingenio programme. The head coordinator of the Topo-Iberia project in Andalusia (in which the UGR will participate, together with the universities of Jaén, Cádiz, and Pablo Olavide) is the director of the Department of Geodynamics of the Universidad de Granada, Francisco González Lodeiro. Researchers from the universities of Oviedo, Barcelona, Autónoma de Barcelona, Complutense, Zaragoza, Salamanca, Spanish Royal Observatory, Geological and Mining Institute of Spain and Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) will also participate in this project.
“Topo-Iberia will conduct innovative research on the topography and spatial as well as temporal evolution (4D) of a natural laboratory, which is the micro-continent formed by the Iberian Peninsula and its borders”, explains González Lodeiro. The actual innovation of this project lies in the joint analysis of the influence of both surface and deep processes, as in other international projects, such as TopoEurope/EuroArray in Europe or the Earthscope programme in the United States.
The professor from the UGR points out that Topo-Iberia is a multidimensional programme, which includes methodological, regional, and thematic aspects. “This project will provide better models for the structure of the lithosphere from natural seismicity, the location of earthquakes, and the measurement of the movements of the Iberian Peninsula. This will create a dense and reliable data base”, states González Lodeiro.
Thanks to this initiative, researchers will learn about the processes and mechanisms that produce surface and subterranean movements occurring today in the Iberian Peninsula and their relation with the rest of Europe and Africa. Moreover, Topo-Iberia will study the structure and dynamics of the lithosphere of the peninsula.
Reference:
Prof. Francisco González Lodeiro. Department of Geodynamics of the Universidad de Granada.
Phone: 958 243 348 – 958 243 352
Email address: lodeiro@ugr.es
