Programme

The idea that sedimentary basins can be compressed and uplifted – inverted – was born as early as the 1920s. However, the interest in inversion tectonics peaked in the late 1980s as documented, for instance, by a 1987 Tectonophysics special issue and a 1989 Geol. Soc. London book that soon became classics. Today few people will consider inversion tectonics a topic at the forefront of geoscience. This is not to say that nothing new can be learned about this phenomenon. Even the enormous variety of associated structures has probably not been exhaustively described and understood. The kinematics of inversion structures is particularly complex, and their mechanics a matter of debate. For instance, modelling studies have been used to suggest that reverse reactivation of normal faults can only occur in transpression, whereas studies from geologically recent cases with well-constrained stress fields do not necessarily support this observation. Inversion tectonics can coexist with or be superimposed on long-wavelength uplift that may or may not reflect a different set of processes altogether. We invite contributions dealing with all aspects of inversion tectonics from architecture over kinematics to dynamics and from field- or seismics-based case studies to analogue and numerical simulations, including also response of depositional systems to active inversion tectonics. New hypotheses challenging common wisdom are especially welcome.