The Western Alpine Ophiolites

Dear Colleagues,

Ophiolites are pieces of oceanic lithosphere that have been thrust onto the edge of continental plates or subducted and sutured within orogenic belts. The investigation of ophiolites is critical for understanding the geodynamics, geochemical budget, fluid–rock interactions, and metamorphic evolution of their geological settings. This Special Issue of Minerals focuses on the ophiolites occurring in a key sector of the Alpine belt—the Western Alps. The Jurassic Western Alpine Ophiolites formed in an oceanic basin that opened between Europe and North Africa-Adria-Iberia. In the Western Alps, the occurrence of eclogite-facies ophiolites is of major importance for unravelling the geodynamics and metamorphism of subduction and exhumation processes. So far, the Western Alpine ophiolites have been interpreted in many different ways according to their different structures, lithostratigraphy, and metamorphic/geochemical imprints. As a result, various tectonic units or sub-units have been identified and contrasting mechanisms have been proposed to explain their present-day juxtaposition.

For this Special Issue, we invite authors to submit papers on field-based structural studies and petrological, geochemical and geochronological investigations. The development of new high precision in situ techniques for mineralogical and isotope geochemical analyses has provided new perspectives that may contribute to the unravelling of the geodynamic evolution of ophiolites from the oceanic stage to their tectonic emplacement. Contributions dealing with these topics are welcome, as are case studies from other sectors of the alpine belt that can be used as a comparison with the Western Alps ophiolites.

Prof. Paola Tartarotti
Dr. Enrico Cannaò
Guest Editors

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