Dr Jacek Szczygieł has received funding from the National Science Centre for a research project entitled Neotectonic evolution of the Northern Calcareous Alps determined through fault-slip analysis, radiometric dating of cave deposits, and morphology of deep karst systems. During the three-year study, observations in the caves of the Salzburg Alps will allow to: 1) reconstruct stress that driven faults reactivation, based on passages offset, and 2) determine their age, based on the dating of broken speleithems, in the caves of the Hoher Göll, Hagengebirge, Tennengebirge and Leoganger Steinberge massifs; 3) determine the age of successive cave levels in the karst massifs and thus 4) determine the rate of valley incision and the time intervals of the massifs uplift. The research will focus on the little-known 110 km long fault zone Königssee – Lammertal – Traunsee. With this research, PI will find out whether this fault zone was active during the last 10 million years, and what traces of this activity remain in the caves. The use of different dating techniques will allow to determine the variability of this activity over time and detect even single, short episodes of increased activity. This in turn will allow to fill in many gaps in the evolution of the Eastern Alps.
