Quartz is one of the most common minerals in the Earth’s crust, and our state of knowledge is greater than for many other crustal minerals. Its properties, from strength to solubility, play a key role in the rheological behaviour of rocks in the Earth’s crust. A wide range of brittle to plastic deformation mechanisms results in a richness of intra- and intercrystalline microstructures, storing a great deal of information concerning the ambient conditions present during their deformation history. Additionally, fluid-rock interaction resulting in dissolution-precipitation creep take place at the microscale and are expressed by cleavage development and quartz veins on a larger scale.
Recent advances in experimental and visualisation techniques have enabled to study these microstructures at a higher magnification and with a better resolution, as well as to explore possible geometrical and kinematical relationships between the different microstructures and the crystallography.
In this session we would like to discuss the interrelationship between all types of deformation microstructures in quartz and their significance with respect to the rheological behaviour of rocks in the Earth’s crust. Furthermore, the influence of fluid presence during brittle and crystalplastic deformation of quartz will be discussed on a large variety or scales. We welcome contributions from field-based, experimental and numerical research.