Tour de France Geology

Some of you may be aware that the Tour de France starts today - Saturday 29th June. One of the joys of following it is looking at the scenery, especially the views from the hovering helicopters. And often the geology is intriguing. A correspondent brought THIS WEBSITE to my attention. This will be giving a geological perspective to each stage.

Just to be contrary, this year the Tour starts in Florence, Italy and the web site talks about the tectonics of the Appenines. THE ARTICLE for today is written by someone who knows what she is talking about and she gives references for further reading. 

Each day of the Tour has a different geological topic and a different author. I hope they will all be so informative.

Tectonic units of the Northern Apennines with indicated buried faults (Figure from Conti et al., 2020). The course of stage 1 in yellow.