Public lecture as part of the search committee in Tectonics and structural geology

Summary: The Jura mountain range in north-western Switzerland is a tectonic textbook example of a foreland fold-and-thrust belt. At its easternmost tip, new geophysical subsurface imagery and geochronological data, combined with structural geological insights gained from field investigations, has allowed its geodynamic evolution to be reconstructed in unprecedented detail. The presentation will focus on two aspects. The approach applied to determine timing and rates of deformation across the range - a cutting-edge topic of fundamental foreland basin research - and the observed interaction between folds and thrusts in the sedimentary cover with deep-seated faults in the underlying crystalline basement. The latter aspect is of great relevance for current ambitions in Switzerland to exploit geothermal energy and to store radioactive waste and captured CO2 in the geological underground.