Actual Geological Processes Acting on the Western Coast of Black Sea

Abstract

In the last decades the whole border of Black Sea had been tremendously damaged due to a number of causes such as the construction of Iron Gates barrages and other dams on Danube effluents, or global sea level rising. The main objective of the project “Implementation of adequate infrastructure of natural risk prevention in most vulnerable areas. Reduction of coastal erosion” was to propose large scale measures in order to mitigate those effects (erosion and landslides). For this purpose, extensive and complex site investigations have been made by international research teams, among which geological, geotechnical and geophysical, on the whole Black Sea coast. The most interesting results were provided by offshore seismic investigations which depicted the presence of a fault network inside the major structural units, on which vertical tectonic movements can be a major cause of long term costal erosion and large scale landslides. The findings raise the problem of the choice of reference benchmark of all topographical, geological and hydrogeological monitoring systems of the whole South Dobrogea unit, knowing that the very large scale vertical movements are much more difficult to detect with usual survey programs.