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Understanding the natural evolution of a river–delta–sea system is important to develop a strong scientific basis for efficient integrated management plans. The distribution of sediment fluxes is linked with the natural connection between sediment source areas situated in uplifting mountain chains and deposition in plains, deltas and, ultimately, in the capturing oceans and seas. The Danube River–western Black Sea is one of the most active European systems in terms of sediment re-distribution that poses significant societal challenges. We aim to derive the tectonic and sedimentological background of human-induced changes in this system and discuss their interplay. This is obtained by analysing the tectonic and associated vertical movements, the evolution of relevant basins and the key events affecting sediment routing and deposition. The analysis of the main source and sink areas is focused in particular on the Miocene evolution of the Carpatho-Balkanides, Dinarides and their sedimentary basins including the western Black Sea. The vertical movements of mountains chains created the main moments of basin connectivity observed in the Danube system. Their timing and effects are observed in sediments deposited in the vicinity of gateways, such as the transition between the Pannonian/Transylvanian and Dacian basins and between the Dacian Basin and western Black Sea. The results demonstrate the importance of understanding threshold conditions driving rapid basins connectivity changes superposed over the longer time scale of tectonic-induced vertical movements associated with background erosion and sedimentation. The spatial and temporal scale of such processes is contrastingly different and challenging. The long-term patterns interact with recent or anthropogenic induced modifications in the natural system and may result in rapid changes at threshold conditions that can be quantified and predicted. Their understanding is critical because of frequent occurrence during orogenic evolution, as commonly observed in the Mediterranean area and discussed elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The balance between extension and contraction in back-arc basins is very sensitive to a number of parameters related to on-going subduction and collision processes. This leads to complex back-arc geometries, where a lateral transition between crustal blocks with contrasting rheologies is often recorded. One good example is the back-arc region of the Balkanides–Pontides orogens, where lateral variations in rheologies are observed between the Balkanides–Moesian block and the Pontides–Western Black Sea Basin. The latter opened during Cretaceous–Eocene, and has been inverted together with the former starting during late Middle Eocene. The inversion generated contrasting geometries along the orogenic strike, with a narrow zone of high deformation in the Balkanides–Moesia region, wide areas of thrusting with low offsets in the Pontides–Western Black Sea Basin and a transitional zone characterized by highly curved geometries. This overall type of inversion is investigated here by the means of analogue modelling testing the role of inherited crustal geometries during inversion. Our modelling suggests that the contrasting architecture of inverted structures observed in the Balkanides–Pontides domain are the result of pre-existing crustal stretching geometries of various blocks inherited from the Cretaceous–Eocene extension. The stretched and weak back-arc basins can transfer contraction deformation at large distances, explaining structures derived by observational studies. The collisional deformation recorded in the Pontides was transmitted at large distances that are in the range of the contraction structures observed in the centre and northern part of the Western Black Sea. In the light of analogue modelling results we argue that the Western Black Sea was a rheologically weaker domain when compared with the adjacent western onshore at the beginning of the inversion, in contrast with previous results derived from numerical modelling studies that argued for a strong West Black Sea domain at the beginning of inversion. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]