Lineament mapping, which is an important part of any structural geological investigation, is made more efficient and easier by the availability of optical as well as radar remote sensing data, such as Landsat and Sentinel with medium and high spatial resolutions. However, the results from these multi-resolution data vary due to their difference in spatial resolution and sensitivity to soil occupation. The accuracy and quality of extracted lineaments depend strongly on the spatial resolution of the imagery. Therefore, the aim of this study was to compare the optical Landsat-8, Sentinel-2A, and radar Sentinel-1A satellite data for automatic lineament extraction. The framework of automatic approach includes defining the optimal parameters for automatic lineament extraction with a combination of edge detection and line-linking algorithms and determining suitable bands from optical data suited for lineament mapping in the study area. For the result validation, the extracted lineaments are compared against the manually obtained lineaments through the application of directional filtering and edge enhancement as well as to the lineaments digitized from the existing geological maps of the study area. In addition, a digital elevation model (DEM) has been utilized for an accuracy assessment followed by the field verification. The obtained results show that the best correlation between automatically extracted lineaments, manual interpretation, and the preexisting lineament map is achieved from the radar Sentinel-1A images. The tests indicate that the radar data used in this study, with 5872 and 5865 lineaments extracted from VH and VV polarizations respectively, is more efficient for structural lineament mapping than the Landsat-8 and Sentinel-2A optical imagery, from which 2338 and 4745 lineaments were extracted respectively.

The continental sea that used to extend from the Mediterranean to China, here referred to as the Eurasian Sea, fluctuated across Eurasia during the warm Paleogene times before its major retreat at the Eocene-Oligocene Transition (EOT) leaving behind the landlocked Paratethys sea. The drivers of the Eurasian sea evolution and its role on Eurasian ecosystems remain poorly understood. This lack of understanding is in large part due to the too fragmentary information currently available on Central Asian sedimentary marine and continental records, in particular in Kazakhstan where existing records remains very poorly dated and correlated. We report new chronostratigraphic data from key sedimentary marine and continental records from westernmost to easternmost Kazakhstan covering the period from the Middle Eocene Climate Optimum when the Eurasian sea reached its largest extent, until its final retreat at the Eocene-Oligocene Transition. These are combined with a compilation of paleoclimate proxies, depositional environments including palaeontological assemblages in a regional stratigraphic framework encompassing the region from the Caspian Sea to Eastern China. Initial results compared to numerical climate simulations enable to discuss potential links between sea fluctuations and geodynamic drivers, climate events, carbon sinks, basin to ocean connections, biome distributions and faunal dispersal routes.

The Pamir orogen, the western extension of the Tibetan plateau, formed and uplifted due to Mesozoic terrane amalgamation and Cenozoic India-Asia collision. The Mesozoic history of the amalgamation of Gondwana-derived Cimmerian terranes to the southern margin of Eurasia that produced the crust of the Pamirs is poorly understood. The birth and demise of an oceanic basin that divided Central and Southern Pamir in the early Mesozoic is an example of a gap in the knowledge of Pamir orogen formation throughout the Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras. Termed Mesotethys, this ocean likely originated in the early Permian when the Cimmerian super-terrane broke from Gondwana's northern limit. Geochemistry of early Permian basalts suggests this rifting event was driven by a plume that generated a seamount or series of seamounts that accreted to the Central Pamir before the Mesotethys closed in the late Triassic. Vestiges of the Mesotethys are preserved in the Rushan - Pshart suture zone. This zone comprises Permian and Triassic marine sedimentary strata and thick layers of volcanic rocks, including the late Triassic basalts. This volcano-sedimentary sequence is intruded by the late Triassic – early Jurassic granites that have subduction-related affinity marking the closure of the Mesotethys. The current work focuses on the geochemical markers of late Triassic volcanism to evaluate whether a plume-related magmatic activity was responsible for the creation of the Mesotethys Ocean.Our preliminary geochemical results indicate that the SiO2 content of basalts is low, ranging from 36.5 to 47.7 wt.%, which classifies the rocks as mafic and ultramafic. The rocks' TiO2 concentration is exceptionally high, ranging from 1.9 to 4.4 wt.%, which is not typical of arc-related basalts and instead resembles oceanic island basalts. Concentration of Al2O3 (7.5-18.8 wt.%), Fe2O3 (8.3-16.3 wt.%), MgO (2.7 – 14.9 wt.%) and CaO (2.5 – 12.4 wt.%) likewise fluctuate in a large range. Alkalis also vary across a wide range (K2O: 0.2 – 3.1 wt.%; Na2O: 1.4 – 5.5 wt.%) and add up to values (1.7 – 7 wt.%) that define the majority of the examined samples (11) as alkali basalts, with three samples plotting below the sub-alkaline – alkaline dividing line. The rocks' relatively high P2O5 (0.2 to 0.6 wt.%) may further reflect their OIB affinity. Normalized to the primitive mantle, trace element patterns on spidergrams reveal a small enrichment of Large-Ion Lithophile Elements and depletion of High-Field Strength Elements. However, positive anomalies in Nb (14.3 – 29 ppm) and Ti rule out subduction as the cause of the rocks' formation. Moreover, high ratios of Nb/La (1.1–1.7) and La/Yb (6.9–15) also support the non-subductional origin of the basalts. Thus, our collected geochemical data reveal a striking similarity to the basalts of oceanic islands.

The ability to reconstruct the geologic evolution of the Earth as a system including the geosphere, atmosphere and biosphere interactions, is essential to understand the fate of our environment in the context of the Climate, Life and Energy crises of the new Anthropocene era. Scientists of tomorrow working on environmental changes require ever more detailed databases and maps to access and correlate the overwhelming mass of information stemming from the ongoing surge of environmental data and models. Earth System reconstructions are fundamental assets to assess potential sources and locations of key geo-resources that are now vital for the energy transition (e.g. raw materials, rare earth elements, subsurface storage, geothermal sites). Earth System reconstructions are also the best means to communicate past and future Life and Environmental evolutions, while providing consciousness of our role and situation in the immensity of Time and Nature. They convey these essential lessons in a didactic fashion for teachers and students, museums, or for governments and NGOs to make decisions and promote public awareness. Although Earth System reconstructions have long been recognized as essential, they have yet to deliver their full breakthrough potential combining various booming disciplines. As part of a large project over Asia, we review here the case of the intensely studied, yet still extremely controversial India-Asia collision with major implications on regional environmental, depositional and global climate transitions. Ongoing debates argue for radically different end-member models of the collision timing and its configuration, and of associated topographic growth in the collision zone. We present here new Asian paleogeographic reconstructions at 50 and 30 Ma that complement an existing set at 60, 40 and 20 Ma with updates. These integrate various end-members models of the India-Asia collision and associated topographic patterns and land-sea masks with implications on the locus, source and generation of resources. Results are provided online (https://map.paleoenvironment.eu/) in various model-relevant formats with associated database and discussion forums to comment an contribute to the amelioration of these maps and databases. We also present the latest developments of the user-friendly and open-source Terra Antiqua Q-GIS plugin (https://paleoenvironment.eu/terra-antiqua/) that has been used and specifically developed with new tools including data-driven and web-based applications

Paleogeographic maps illustrate the distribution of land and sea, as well as the topography of the Earth’s surface during different geological periods based on the compilation of a wide range of geological and geophysical datasets. These maps provide boundary conditions for various models of the Earth’s systems, including climate, mantle convection, and land surface evolution. A number of software programs and computer algorithms have been developed in the past three decades to reconstruct either the past positions of continents and oceans or their elevation and depth. We recently developed the open-source and user friendly "Terra Antiqua", allowing users to create digital paleogeographic maps in a Geographic Information System (GIS) environment (QGIS), using various tools that are easy to operate in combination with Gplates, a widely used software for plate tectonic reconstructions. The next step is to develop a comprehensive and integrated solution easily accessible on the web that can automate most of the steps involved in reconstructing past plate configurations and topography. We present here a web application ("Terra Antiqua online") that we are developing for the creation of digital paleogeographic maps. The web application has two parts: (1) The front-end uses CesiumJS, an open-source JavaScript library for making 3D globes and maps, to visualize the databases and let the users interact with it. (2) The back-end uses Python algorithms and libraries such as GDAL and pyGPlates to process the data and perform tectonic and hypsometric reconstructions. Terra Antiqua online uses pyGplates API to access existing tectonic models and apply them to rotate plate positions and datasets to their past position. New developments are allowing it to estimate the elevation, depth and distribution of the land and sea by automatically processing various geological proxy data (e.g. paleofacies maps, paleo-elevation proxies, fossils databases etc…) according to physically based algorithms. The project further aims to incorporate web-based landscape modeling tools and develop a community around a geological database and paleogeographic reconstruction methods and standards.