Left: Stromboli, Italy - Measures 924 meters above sea level/but 3,200 meters from sea floor.
What is happening in L'Aquila, Italy? How does it relate to Santorini? Italy has a line of active volcanoes that run the length of the peninsula west of the recent L'Aquila earthquake. The geologic instability in Italy is characteristic of the Northeastern Mediterranean and the plate tectonics that caused the Santorini eruption. The continental Eurasian and African plates continue to collide with Africa losing as the subducting plate. These two plates also smash against the micro-Aegean plate (Greece and Western Turkey) in the Adriatic Sea east of L'Aquila, again with Africa subducting. The subduction of the African plate with the Aegean plate in the Aegean Sea south of Santorini is widely believed to have caused the geologic instability and the volcanic arc in that region.
No comments:
Post a Comment