We investigate how tectonics, climate, hydrology, fluid flow, and sediment supply interact to shape sedimentary basins and depositional environments through time. A major focus of this research is the Dinarides, the southern Pannonian Basin, and related Miocene intramontane and marginal basins, where basin evolution records the combined effects of mountain building, extensional tectonics, climate change, marine flooding, and changing water–sediment pathways.

Our work integrates sedimentology, stratigraphy, geochronology, stable-isotope analysis, provenance studies, and paleoclimate constraints to reconstruct the timing and mechanisms of environmental change. Recent studies show that tectonic activity and fault-controlled fluid circulation can trigger travertine deposition in intramontane basins, providing a record of basin evolution, fluid pathways, and local depositional environments (Andrić-Tomašević et al., 2024). In saline alkaline lake systems, we investigate how arid climate, hydrothermal fluid flow, and basin hydrology control sedimentation and authigenic mineral formation (Andrić-Tomašević et al., 2025).

We also use U-Pb geochronology of volcaniclastic deposits to improve the temporal framework of Miocene basin evolution. New age constraints from the Sinj Basin help refine the onset and progression of lacustrine flooding, provenance relationships, and tectono-sedimentary evolution of the External Dinarides (Šamarija et al., 2026). Similarly, new U-Pb ages from the Prnjavor and Tuzla basins constrain the timing and mode of the first Miocene marine flooding of the southern Pannonian Basin, revealing progressive eastward propagation of extension along its southern margin (Mandic et al., 2026).

A further component of this research examines how mountain topography influences regional hydroclimate. Modern meteoric-water isotope data across the Dinarides show strong spatial gradients controlled primarily by orographic rainout, moisture-source mixing, and precipitation seasonality, providing an important framework for paleoelevation and paleoclimate reconstructions (Ortiz et al., 2026). Together, these studies allow us to assess how tectonics, climate, hydrology, and surface processes interact to produce the sedimentary, geochemical, and paleontological records preserved in basin archives.

Our basin-analysis research investigates how tectonics, lithospheric structure, sediment supply, surface loading, and deep geodynamic processes control the development of sedimentary basins. We combine seismic interpretation, tectonostratigraphic analysis, 3D geological modelling, subsidence analysis, flexural modelling, and forward stratigraphic modelling to reconstruct basin evolution and quantify the mechanisms that generate accommodation space.

A central focus of our work has been the Northern Alpine Foreland Basin, where we study how crustal and lithospheric inheritance, flexural loading, slab dynamics, and sediment redistribution shape basin architecture. We show that along-strike variations in the Molasse Basin are controlled by lithospheric- and crustal-scale processes recorded in seismic facies, sedimentary sequences, subsidence histories, and 3D basin geometry (Eskens, Andrić-Tomašević.. et al., 2024). We also investigate seismic-scale syn-flexural normal faults and their growth-strata relationships to understand how flexural bending and basin subsidence are accommodated within the German Molasse Basin (Eskens,Andrić-Tomašević.. et al., 2025).

Our work further links basin architecture to evolving orogenic loads and deep geodynamic forcing. Using seismic observations and flexural modelling, we test how increased surface and subsurface loading in the Alpine orogenic core may drive orogenward migration of the flexural forebulge (Eskens, Maiti & Andrić-Tomašević, 2025). Forward stratigraphic modelling allows us to assess how slab break-off may be expressed in foreland-basin stratigraphy, including changes in depocentre position, sediment thickness, and stacking patterns (Eskens et al., 2025). Together, these approaches bridge observational basin analysis and process-based modelling to identify the tectonic, surface-process, and deep-Earth controls on sedimentary architecture through time.