Electromagnetic study of the Trans-European suture zone

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We propose a research project to study the deep geo-electrical structure of the crust and upper mantle across the central segment of the Trans-European Suture Zone (TESZ) in Pomerania/Poland with geo-electromagnetic methods. The TESZ constitutes one of the most prominent tectonic boundaries in Europe and separates the Precambrian East European Platform and Baltic shield from the Paleozoic mountain belts of Central and Western Europe. It has been extensively studied by a variety of seismological methods, but little is known about the electrical structure of the subsurface. We therefore propose an experiment consisting of two profiles crossing the suture zone, densely occupied by an array of broadband magnetotelluric sites, and extending from the Baltic Sea in Poland to the Variscan Front in Eastern Germany. We intend to evaluate the full magnetotelluric/magnetovariational data set by employing new modelling and inversion algorithms in 2D and 3D, including anisotropy. The study aims at providing insights into the layering of Paleozoic sediments, the geometry of the Polish-North German conductivity anomaly, with a special emphasis on a distinction of sedimentary troughs and black shales as causes for anomalous transfer functions, structures of the crystalline basement, and a possible anisotropy in the deep crust or upper mantle.