Project Crop (an abbreviation for crosta profonda, the Italian for ‘deep crust’) represents an attempt to make the recurring dream of every geologist come true: to descend deep within the Earth’s crust and observe a slice of it as though from through the other side of an immense window. We thus may come to understand how and where the earthquakes originate that periodically rock Italy, and where the many active volcanoes draw their strength, and to recognize which areas have practical potential in that they are more “suited” for hydrocarbons or geothermal fluids.
Project Crop concerns itself precisely with the study of the Earth’s crust in Italy through the production of certain seismic profiles with soundings both on land and at sea. Set up in the mid-1980s (it officially got underway in 1988), the project’s formal structure takes the form of an agreement between the CNR (National Research Council) and industry; all interested Italian geologists and geophysicists participate in what is probably one of the most important research projects in the field of Earth Science in Italy.
Studies already conducted in the western Alps (in collaboration with the analogous French project, ECORS) have allowed the definition of an image of the Earth’s crust that is revised with respect to the “model” elaborated and perfected over the years by alpine geologists. This earlier work, however, ought not to be underestimated. Numerous characteristics were perceived by intuition in the past, but how many geologists of Argand’s generation – Argand was the first systematic interpreter of the Alps in the 1920s – could have imagined, for example, that the Earth’s mantel would turn out to have been involved in the formation of the Alps? And that the Alps themselves might contain traces of yet older chains formed – probably – when the collision involving the continents of Europe and Africa had not yet begun? The extension to great depths (50-60 kilometres down) of seismic prospecting using vertical soundings is a theme on the frontier of research in the field of geology, not so much for the technologies required as for the indispensable elaboration of exhaustive geological models taking into due account data derived from both below and on the Earth’s surface.
Subsequent to the acquisition and elaboration of data there thus follows a phase of interpretation which plays a decisive role, and which calls for scientific rigour, ability to make connections, experience and – why not? – geological intuition as well as imagination in the search for important innovative ideas.
Project Crop will be capable of confirming or denying the validity of models already advanced for explaining the geological configuration of the Italian peninsula, thus allowing an overall increase in basic knowledge; this in turn represents the precondition for maximum exploitation of technical advances. Without a doubt Crop will provide new information about the “collision” between the European and African plates, whose exact limits have still not been determined even today, just as the type and degree of deformation resulting from the collision have not yet been fully described. This is not the first time that the Italian geological community has been called upon to update geological knowledge concerning the peninsula and surrounding seas in the very heart of the area of the Mediterranean where the great Mesozoic ocean came to an end and where the formation of new seas began. In the early 1990s a project denominated “Structural Model of Italy 1:500,000” was presented before the scientific community. For a number of years now the task of taking up the challenge of advancing the frontiers of knowledge about our territory has been assigned to project Crop: the new target area is between the Earth’s crust and mantel where long-range artificial seismic echoes have finally begun to shed light on both the structures and remote events involved. Here other countries have led the way with the well-known sister projects Cocorp, Birps, Dekorp and Ecors.
z Interpretation of deep seismic line ECORS-CROP through the