The current upper crustal and in-depth tectonic structures and evolution of the Adria microplate, located between the large Eurasian and African tectonic plates, have been the primary focus of numerous scientific publications. These studies have concluded a wide range of interpretations, some of which are contradictory, since the earliest paleotectonic models over a hundred years ago.

Our main goal is to integrate tectonics and stratigraphy at the upper crust level along two regional transects with deep geophysical data to create a numerical model of the current crust and upper mantle structure at lithospheric scale. Additionally, the results indicate a minimum width of the Adria microplate.

The two lithospheric transects through Adria document its deep structure with two sets of limited lithospheric slabs, possibly only the continental part under the Apennines and Dinarides and with opposite dips. In addition, the Ionian oceanic subduction to the north under the Tyrrhenian Sea may correspond to the oceanic part corresponding to the continental delaminated slabs under the Apennines and still connected to the westernmost end of Calabria.

Along the southern transect, using already published structural cross-sections, we determine a total shortening of about 300 km, distributed in almost equal parts between the Apennines and Dinarides fold belts. These values allow the reconstruction a minimum width of the Adria microplate of 1050 km before middle-late Jurassic, and thus before its deformation during the long-lasting closure of the complex Neotethys Ocean basins.

Montserrat mountain is an impressive massif of monoliths that is the most relevant element of the Central Catalonia UNESCO Geopark. This conglomerate massif, located just 35 km to the northwest of Barcelona, is 9 km long and 1236 m high. Such rocks belong to the Paleogene sedimentary infill of the Ebro basin and are the result of gravels accumulated in an Eocene fan delta located at the foothills of the Catalan Coastal Ranges, an alpine fold and thrust belt roughly parallel to the Catalan coast and that underwent a distension in Miocene times.

The thickness of the conglomerate strata (1100 m) together with the occurrence of joints cracking the rock, provide impressive monoliths found throughout the massif. Erosion generates rounded towers of massive conglomerate. In an attempt to explore whether if the geomorphology of the Montserrat massif is unique, a review of comparable conglomerate massifs has been carried out throughout the Earth. Although larger or thicker reliefs of conglomerate exist in places such as China, Australia or Himalaya, quantitative estimations permit to conclude that Montserrat is the rock massif that has the largest number of conglomerate monoliths. The large density of the jointing pattern together with the stage of erosion of the massif, play a key role in the number of existing monoliths.

Nearly a million cubic kilometers of salt, about 5% of the salt dissolved in the global oceans, accumulated on the Mediterranean seafloor between 5.96 and 5.33 million years ago, during the so-called Messinian salinity crisis (MSC). This is possibly the largest abrupt environmental event on Earth since the beginning of the Cenozoic Era, 66 million years ago. The last two decades have seen much progress in understanding its sedimentological and geochemical record, the geodynamic mechanisms responsible, and the impact on biology. And yet the question as to how deep did the sea desiccate during that event has remained elusive because sedimentological and seismic stratigraphy evidence yield conflicting estimations. While erosion markers suggest seafloor subaerial exposure due to a kilometer-scale sea level drop about 5.54 million years ago, shallow and relatively fresh-water deposits with Paratethyan fauna (the Lago-Mare unit) puzzlingly point to both a full and an empty Mediterranean scenario.

Landscape evolution modeling on a Miocene reconstruction of the region calibrated with a recent sediment transport budget and with river incision data are here used to explore mechanically-plausible evolutions of the last MSC stage under reasonable climate scenarios. The results show that the evaporative sea level fall lead an erosional wave propagating into nearby lacustrine basins such as the Black Sea or the Pannonian Basin. The emergence and erosion of former seaways transformed into spillways triggered a capture of water from those higher basins and a gradual sea level rise in the Mediterranean over time-scales similar to the duration of the crisis. Milankovic climate oscillations superimposed to this trend cause large-amplitude (500–600 m) harmonic sea level variations that reach progressively higher levels. This reconciles the shallow precipitation of salt in deeper basins during the earlier lowstands with the subsequent lago-mare marginal deposits found near present sea level, and with the sea level drop required to excavate the Strait of Gibraltar during the final Zanclean cataclysmic flood. These results add to previous studies identifying the interaction between geodynamics (tectonic plate convergence), climate (mid-latitude dry conditions modulated by precessional cyclicity), and erosion (of seaways and spillways between subbasins) as responsible for the timing of the Mediterranean salt giant.

The cryosphere, which encompasses all of the Earth's frozen water, is undergoing significant changes due to recent warming, with profound implications for mid-latitude mountain regions, including the Mediterranean region. This communication will present the recent changes of different cryosphere components at different spatial scales, from a global to a Mediterranean perspective, focusing on glacier trends, changes in snow cover and permafrost state. These changes not only reshape the landscape of the Mediterranean mountain ranges, but also affect hydrological systems, biodiversity and human activities in surrounding areas.