The eastern Adriatic margin is a seismically active region, resulting in a significant tsunami hazard for the 3.5 million people living in few major cities on the Adriatic Sea and for operational natural gas offshore platforms. 

In particular, the Dinaric-Hellenic orogenic belt is characterised by a unique oceanic to continental subduction transition: to the north, the rigid Adria indents the Eastern Alps and Dinarides, while the southern part is subducting beneath the advancing Hellenides. Albania, the Republic of North Macedonia, and northern Greece lie along this transition, marked by the Kefalonia-Lefkada Transform Zone (KTF). The strike-slip KTF accommodates intense deformation resulting in high seismicity, as demonstrated by the large earthquakes, with magnitude higher than grade 6, that hit this region in the last decades.

Overall, this along-strike change in subduction dynamics causes a complex deformation field at surface.

This project brings together a wide spectrum of expertise such as structural geology, tectonic geodesy, seismology, sedimentology, and surface geochemistry. We aim to:

• unravel the evolution of this region and understand the distribution of surface deformation;
• reconstruct the kinematic evolution of the KTF system and its relation to the neighbouring structures (i.e., Katouna-Stamna Fault, Corinth rift, the Central Hellenic Shear zone, the North Anatolian Fault).

Ultimately, our goal is to unravel the interplay and feedback mechanisms among surface processes, climate, tectonics, and geodynamics, with particular focus on the geologic and seismic deformation of the margin.