Passive continental margins represent long-term and large-scale geo-archives of Earth processes related to mantle dynamics, break-up of continents, creation of sedimentary basins, long-term landscape evolution, changes in ocean circulation and their effect on climate. Passive margins are also of paramount economic importance in terms of hydrocarbon resources. This interdisciplinary session seeks contributions from geological and geophysical observations, as well as from geodynamic or geomaterials modeling, addressing the interplay of deep mantle - lithosphere - basin - surface – climate and erosion processes in passive margin systems and adjacent continents. We solicit thermochronological studies contributing to onshore – offshore feed-back processes, studies related to magmatic activities in passive margins, seismic studies of the lithosphere and mantle, basin modeling, as well as geodynamic modeling related in particular to mantle dynamics and its multiple surface expressions. Emphasis is given to the North and South Atlantic system and adjacent continents but the session welcomes contributions on other passive continental margins as well. The session addresses the many complex interacting feedback cycles that acted since the breakup of continents. We also encourage scientists concerned with the long-term evolution of fracture zones at passive continental margins and adjacent continents to present their data.

Invited speakers include:
Nicky White: Spatial and Temporal Evolution of the African Landscape
Leni Scheck Wenderoth: Multiple Uplift phases inferred from the Southwest African Atlantic margin
Maria Seton: Early breakup of Gondwana: constraints from global plate motion models
Ritske Huisman: Controls on (anomalous) topography in rifted margin settings