The goal of the interdisciplinary MACIV project is to obtain new information about the crustal and lithospheric structures and ongoing volcanic processes beneath the French Massif Central (FMC) that occupies a strategic position in the French geological and geographical landscape, having recorded a varied geological history from the end of the Proterozoic to the present, i.e., nearly 600 Ma. We specifically aim to improve our understanding of the impact of the lithological-structural (…)

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(at project start)

The FMC (Figure 1) is the largest zone of exposed Variscan basement in Western Europe, and is key to understanding the growth of the continental crust at the Proterozoic-Phanerozoic transition and the Variscan orogeny. The FMC geology also recorded the Alpine cycle, the opening of rifts before the Late Eocene, and the most significant intraplate volcanic activity in Western Europe. Understanding this Mesozoic-Cenozoic activity has implications for assessing seismic and volcanic risks and (…)

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The core of the MACIV project is an innovative multiscale temporary seismic experiment that will fill a data gap on the seismic structure of the FMC (Figure ; WP1 : Seismic data collection and distribution). The array of several hundreds of modern seismic instruments is designed to probe different characteristic scales and depths of the FMC volcanic systems with optimal spatial resolutions. The large-scale arrays will cover the entire FMC and provide first-order information on the sites and (…)

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