ACTIVE TECTONICS OF THE AEGEAN REGION

Abstract

The Aegean Sea and its surrounding regions comprise one of the most rapidly deforming parts of the Alpine-Himalayan mountain belt. Though the deformation of the belt as a whole is related to thc northward move­ ment of Africa, Arabia, and India relative to Eurasia, the tectonics of the Aegean region itself is dominated by strike-slip and extensional motions. The actively deforming part of the Aegean region is not large (about 700 x 700 km2) compared with that in Asia, yet it has had an influence on Our views of continental tectonics disproportionate to its size, and comparable perhaps only to Tibet. Fundamental contributions from the Aegean have been made to many topics, including: