The Marine Geosciences and Global Change (MGGC) research Line focuses on understanding the physical, chemical, biological, and anthropogenic processes that interact within the Earth System, and the relationship of these interactions with Global Change. The MGGC Line integrates multidisciplinary geological, geophysical, geochemical and biogeochemical investigations beneath the oceans through an interdisciplinary Earth System analysis. We plan to address this interdisciplinary challenge by studying natural processes operating on a wide range of time and scales in the ocean basins (coastal and shelf areas, continental margins and basin plains) and in various key target regions (Western Mediterranean, Atlantic Ocean, Antarctic Ocean, Equatorial Pacific and Eastern Indian Ocean). We will emphasize Geodynamic, Sedimentary Processes and Environments, and Climate Change and Environmental studies. The MGGC Line utilizes a large variety of specialized laboratories and expensive infrastructure that include research vessels, observing networks, geophysical and sampling equipment, national and international data centres, computer laboratories and experimental facilities.

The MGGC Line sustains basic scientific research but includes themes of societal relevance, with the aims of providing useful information to government decision-makers and private enterprises. Social and economic relevance concerns climate change (past and present environmental and climate variability at regional and global scale), geological hazards (active tectonics, related seismicity and sediment-instability, shoreline and near-shore evolution applied to coastal zone management), and marine resources (hydrocarbon reservoirs and gas hydrates). The MGGC Line is built on existing research projects of the IACT and interacts closely with the activities from other IACT Research Lines: the Environmental Geochemistry Line and the Lithosphere Dynamics Line in particular.