TopoScandiaDeep; The Scandinavian Mountains: deep processes

Mountains form mostly at convergent or strike-slip margins and are not expected to form in intraplate settings. Uplift occurred however in various places around the North Atlantic after continental breakup, leading in particular to the Northern and Southe rn Scandinavian mountains. The aim of the project is to answer two fundamental questions related to the Cenozoic land uplift observed around the NE Atlantic: (1) what are the mechanisms that led to mountain building far away from plate boundaries? (2) wha t is the nature of the compensating masses sustaining the present-day topography? The project is an international cooperative effort in the framework of the ESF project TOPO-EUROPE. Led by the University of Oslo, the project has partners in Norway at the University of Bergen and at the Norwegian Geological Survey, and abroad at the Universities of Aarhus, Copenhagen, Karlsruhe and Amsterdam. The project will exploit all the geophysical data recently obtained in Southern Norway to build a seismic model of the mantle under the region of uplift and surrounding areas. The seismic model will be used to make a rheological model of the area and test different scenarios for the uplift.