Fold-and-thrust belts and accretionary wedges worldwide represent a rich locus of diverse research, including those focused on active deformational and surface processes. Currently this includes ground-breaking research into the growth of critical-taper wedges in large and great earthquakes such as the offshore Taihoku, Wenchuan, Maule, Sumatran and Chi-Chi earthquakes, for which dynamic processes at multi-scales may to play significant roles. These great events also play significant roles as the quanta of growth in structural geology and tectonic geomorphology and represent a local and regional driver of landscape evolution. Furthermore much improved seismic imaging and monitoring is giving unprecedented insight into the dynamics of earthquake rupture and present exquisite images of the deformed state and history of wedges and their links to more interior portions of mountain belts and subduction channels, linking from shallow depths, through the upper crust to a full lithospheric scale. Scientific and industrial drilling is providing in situ data on fault-zone processes, stress state, and fluid pressures that is driving much theoretical and laboratory-based effort in fault and crustal mechanics. Theory, modeling and synthesis are continuing to provide deep and refreshing insights of significance.

We warmly invite contributions from the full range of disciplines concerned with compressive wedges, including both active and passive-margin settings worldwide.