Session programme

The separation of the African and Arabian plates is responsible for the opening of the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden that meet the East African Rift at the Afar triple junction. Moreover, the strike-slip movement between the African and the Arabian plates is accommodated in the northernmost part of the rift system by the Dead Sea fault and its marine extension in the Gulf of Aqaba. High volcanic and seismic activity in and around the three arms of the divergence highlights some of the key aspects of this opening system.

This complex geodynamic system is currently investigated by multiple geoscientific approaches including e.g., tectonics, volcanology, stratigraphy, geodynamics, geodesy as well as active and passive geophysical methods.

In this session, we welcome contributions that are based on (but not limited to) such methods and investigate the basins of the Gulf of Suez, Gulf of Aqaba, Red Sea, Gulf of Aden, Afar depression and their surrounding regions, from the mantle to the crust.

The West Pacific regime is dominated by a convergent plate setting, but develops two thirds of the world’s marginal basins which have different histories and causes. Some are built on continental crust and some formed by seafloor spreading. Some began to form in Mesozoic time and others began in Cenozoic time. Many are filled with sediments and volcanics and some of these contain hydrocarbon deposits. Some are no longer actively extending but others are still tectonically active and pose hazards to nearby coastal communities. The purpose of this session is to present our modern understanding of these marginal basins, how they formed, how they subsided, how they were filled, how they died, and the economic benefits and potential hazards they present.
In this session, we welcome all contributions that deal with marginal basins in the West Pacific and/or try to answer to the questions related to the evolution of marginal basins in convergent plate settings. We particularly encourage multi-disciplinary studies that address the issues of inheritance on the rifting process, the discuss modes of breakup, the role of magmatism in lithospheric breakup and the contribution of sedimentation and source to sink processes in marginal margins.

Public information:
(1) For attenders, you are encrouraged to download and read through the related present materials before the session, and prepare your comments and questions (in text) in advance to avoid delays;
(2) For presenters, please give a short summary of your research, and be prepared to answer questions. It will be better to have some of the answers on your conclusions and methods typed in advance.
(3) Provide your contacts to audience, thus the discussion could continue after the session.

Interdisciplinary study of the Northeast Atlantic region offers an extraordinary opportunity to advance understanding of interactions and co-dependencies between the solid Earth, ocean, atmosphere, cryosphere and climate. Understanding these issues are of critical importance to Europe and Scandinavia, and they are of global relevance. The unprecedented surge in exploration of the Northeast Atlantic Realm that has unfolded in recent years has delivered major leaps forward in understanding its geological structure, dynamics and development, economic resources and volcanism. Examples include the complexity of the conjugate volcanic rifted margins, contact metamorphism of carbon-rich shales by sill intrusions, producing thermogenic methane, the discovery of widespread continental crust in the ocean, the critical role of the Greenland-Iceland-Faroe bathymetric ridge in influencing ocean circulation between the Arctic and the Atlantic south of Iceland, mapping of gas hydrates and the study of crustal structure beneath the Greenland icecap. Throughout the Cenozoic these factors have influenced ocean and atmosphere composition and circulation, climate change, and the growth, wastage and transport of ice. Detailed understanding of the interdependencies of these phenomena in the past and through time is arguably of critical importance to understanding the current, rapid changes in the natural environment. The goal of this special session is to bring together diverse contributions drawing on all the above disciplines in order to identify potentially fertile areas for broad, cross-disciplinary study of the Northeast Atlantic Realm moving forward.

The acquisition of new datasets at Continent-Ocean-Transition (COT) of rifted margins show significant variability, highlighting the diversity of parameters controlling the rift-to-drift transition during continental breakup. This session aims at gathering new observations, concepts, and techniques to investigate deformation mechanisms, dynamics of continental breakup, and generation of the first oceanic crust. We invite presentations focusing on topics from rifting up to incipient seafloor spreading, including studies discussing the structure and nature of COT, tectonic, magmatic, rheological and thermal evolution, melt initiation, sedimentary records, deformation mechanisms, and alteration processes. We encourage contributions using multidisciplinary and innovative methods including marine geosciences, seismology, sedimentology, field geology, geochemistry, thermochronology, plate reconstruction, and modelling. We welcome studies based on worldwide natural examples from active rifts, fossil and present-day rifted margins. Special emphasis will be given to presentations that integrate comparisons of tectonic and magmatic processes between continental and oceanic settings that could improve our understanding of continental breakup and mid-oceanic ridge initiation.