A new European crustal model

EPcrust is a new crustal model for the European plate, derived from collection and critical merging of existing information selected from the literature. The model covers the whole European plate from North Africa to the North Pole (20N - 90N) and from the Mid-Atlantic Ridge to the Urals (40W - 70E). We selected global and local models, derived from geological assumptions, active seismic experiments, surface-wave studies, noise correlation, receiver functions. Because of its characteristics, EPcrust is most suited for use at the broad European scale for a variety of research topics, including: wave propagation model- ing at continental scale, crustal correction in tomography, gravity studies, dynamic topography inference and so on.

EPcrust 3D

Model EPcrust presents significant advantages with respect to previous models:

  • It covers the whole European plate
  • It is a complete and internally-consistent model (with all the parameters provided, also for the sedimentary layer)
  • It is reproducible
  • It is easy to update by adding new contributions
  • It is available in a convenient digital format


The European Reference Model

EPcrust was developed in the NERIES framework. The main goal was to build up a prototype for the reference seismological model under the European plate, crust plus mantle structure.