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Introduction

Greece has a 13,676 km coastline, which is long for its area (131,944 sq. km). The country has been, and still is, strongly affected by tectonic and volcanic activity. The Greek peninsula was the outcome of the Alpine orogeny: it was previously part of the Tethys Sea, but with the Alpine orogenic uplift there was folding and faulting along the NW–SE trend of the Hellenides (Kronberg and Günther 1978), which led to an extremely rugged topography, with a large number of horsts and grabens (fault-bounded ­corridors of uplift and subsidence, the horsts forming promontories and the grabens bays), extending NW–SE. Vertical displacement between the crests of these horsts and the floors of the grabens can be up to 2 km. In addition, major upwarping of the Greek peninsula has led to high spine-like mountain ranges such as the Pindos Mountains inland and the Taygetos Mountains, which run out as a peninsula to Cape Matapan (Akrotirion Tainaron) in the south-­central Peloponnese....

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(2010). Greece. In: Bird, E.C.F. (eds) Encyclopedia of the World's Coastal Landforms. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-8639-7_128

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