About this Research Topic
Fold-and-thrust belts are a characteristic structural unit observed at the outer part of mountain belts and accretionary prisms formed along convergent plate boundaries. The active folds and thrusts usually develop at the piedmonts and within the foreland basins of active mountain belts. Here human populations, fertile lands, infrastructures and economic centers are also commonly concentrated and hence exposed to seismic hazards. Coastal areas are exposed to tsunami hazards from active offshore fold-thrust structures. In addition, foreland basins and fold-and-thrust belts host significant fossil energy resources.
Hazard mitigation requires us to better understand the three-dimensional structure of fold-and-thrust belts, their seismic behavior and evolution. Earthquakes that occurred in the last couple of decades, newly-available ground-surface deformation observations from Sentinel satellites, the development of higher-resolution topographic models and the increased amount and quality of subsurface data acquired for oil and gas exploration purposes provide new opportunities to reach this goal. Enhanced exchanges between scientists from these different communities, also including modelers, are needed to address the issues mentioned above.
We welcome Original Research, Reviews, Methods and other article types allowed by the Structural Geology and Tectonics section of Frontiers in Earth Science. We especially encourage contributions of the following issues:
• Late Cenozoic deformation, seismotectonics, and geohazards in fold-and-thrust belts;
• Geometry and kinematic evolution of thrust-related structures;
• Morphotectonic analysis of landscape response to active folding and thrusting;
• The interactions of tectonics and surface processes;
• Analog or numerical modeling of orogenic wedge evolution.
Hazard mitigation requires us to better understand the three-dimensional structure of fold-and-thrust belts, their seismic behavior and evolution. Earthquakes that occurred in the last couple of decades, newly-available ground-surface deformation observations from Sentinel satellites, the development of higher-resolution topographic models and the increased amount and quality of subsurface data acquired for oil and gas exploration purposes provide new opportunities to reach this goal. Enhanced exchanges between scientists from these different communities, also including modelers, are needed to address the issues mentioned above.
We welcome Original Research, Reviews, Methods and other article types allowed by the Structural Geology and Tectonics section of Frontiers in Earth Science. We especially encourage contributions of the following issues:
• Late Cenozoic deformation, seismotectonics, and geohazards in fold-and-thrust belts;
• Geometry and kinematic evolution of thrust-related structures;
• Morphotectonic analysis of landscape response to active folding and thrusting;
• The interactions of tectonics and surface processes;
• Analog or numerical modeling of orogenic wedge evolution.
Keywords: Active deformation, Earthquake hazards, Structural geology
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
