Tectonics and Structural Geology

Why Strike and Dip Conversions Confuse Even Professional Geologists ?

Nkodia Hardy January 16, 2026

Geologists taking structural measurements in the Congo River, with the overlay title: Why Strike and Dip Conversions Confuse Even Professional Geologists?

Photo: Nkodia Hardy

Whether you are a student, educator, or industry professional, you have likely encountered the myriad conventions used for recording geological orientations. For students, this landscape can be perplexing; for professionals, it may lead to the sinking feeling that a crucial undergraduate lecture was missed. Indeed, converting strike and dip measurements between different systems, such as Quadrants ...[Read More]

How Lava Domes Grow: Field Observations and Thermo-Mechanical Insights from the 1979 Soufrière Eruption

Takafumi Maruishi January 8, 2026

Photographs of the Soufrière lava dome from the Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program: GVP-05128.

To kick off the New Year, we have invited a guest author, Takafumi Maruishi, a researcher in the Research Division for Volcanic Disasters / Center for Volcano Research Promotion, National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Resilience, Japan. He explains the scaling law of lava dome growth and its physical insight. Effusive eruptions—when magma reaches the surface and is extruded as ...[Read More]

Extensional tectonics at oceanic transform faults: a new perspective on plate tectonics

Yu Ren November 24, 2021

Viscosity structure of the oceanic transform fault revealed by geodynamic simulations. Credit: Grevemeyer et al., 2021.

Yu Ren is a PhD candidate at GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel, Germany. He uses three primary tools to study marine tectonics: geomorphology, seismology, and numerical modelling. His PhD project is on the structural and tectonic characterization of oceanic transform faults. Oceanic transform faults (OTFs), usually considered as first-order tectonic segmentation of mid-ocean r ...[Read More]

The Makran accretionary wedge: an ideal natural laboratory to study accretionary processes.

Jonas Ruh June 16, 2020

Lower Miocene turbiditic (layered shale and sandstone) sequences of the Makran acretionary wedge. Credits: Jonas Ruh.

How does an accretionary wedge form? For this edition of Minds over Methods, we have invited Jonas Ruh, lecturer in the Structural Geology and Tectonics group of the Geological Institute at the Department of Earth Sciences, ETH Zürich, to tell us about the Makran accretionary wedge, one of the largest on Earth. He explains how the use of field observations and numerical modelling helped him to bet ...[Read More]

Analog models for teaching and more, even at home

Ágnes Király May 26, 2020

Ágnes Király is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Centre of Earth Evolution and Dynamics (CEED) at the University of Oslo, Norway. Ági has a background in geophysics, incorporating natural observations with numerical and analog models to study subduction zone processes. Ági has simulated subduction systems mostly in the Central Mediterranean. Working this spring will probably be somewhat diffe ...[Read More]

Neutrons and X-rays: 3D and 4D imaging in geoscience

Anne Pluymakers April 6, 2020

In-situ 4D Neutron imaging of imbibition of heavy water in an Indiana limestone (Cordonnier et al., 2019).

Anne Pluymakers is an assistant professor at TU Delft, whose hobbies include experimental rock mechanics and fluid-rock interaction. She focuses on the effects of fluids on mechanical behaviour of rocks at representative in-situ temperature and pressure conditions, with a strong focus on hydrochemical fluid-rock interaction. Investigating the microstructure of the rock and how it is altered is cri ...[Read More]

Minds over Methods: Dating deformation with U-Pb carbonate geochronology

EGU Guest blogger August 16, 2019

Cathodoluminescence image of calcite vein in background, with 100 micron laser ablation spots overlain top right and U-Pb isochron overlain left. Image credit: Nick Roberts

For this edition of Minds over Methods, we have invited Nick Roberts, a research scientist at the British Geological Survey, working within the Geochronology and Tracers Facility (GTF) running a LA-ICP-MS laboratory. Nick has a background in ‘hard-rock’ geology, incorporating geochemistry, geochronology, and magmatic and metamorphic petrology across a wide range of tectonic settings, and is now in ...[Read More]

Minds over Methods: Virtual Microscopy for Geosciences

Liene Spruženiece July 23, 2019

Information that can be extracted from a thin-section scan using the Virtual Microscope. All micrographs represent the same area within the thin section. From the upper left side: plain polarized light, crossed polarizers rotated by 0°, crossed polarizers rotated by 45°; from the lower left side: colour intensity map, colour saturation map, phase map. Credit: Liene Spruženiece

The next “Minds over Methods” blogpost is a group effort of Liene Spruženiece (left) – postdoctoral researcher at RWTH Aachen and her colleagues Joyce Schmatz, Simon Virgo and Janos L. Urai. The Virtual Microscope is a collaborative project between RWTH Aachen University and Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology (Schmatz et al., 2010; Virgo et al., 2016). In the ...[Read More]

Minds over Methods: The faults of a rift

Åke Fagereng June 5, 2019

Looking south along the Malawi rift, with escarpment to the right and Chilwa Intrusions in the valley floor. Credit: Åke Fagereng

Do ancient structures control present earthquakes in the East African Rift? Åke Fagereng, Reader in Structural Geology, School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, Cardiff University For this edition of Minds over Methods, we have invited Åke Fagereng, reader in Structural Geology at the School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, Cardiff University. Åke writes about faults in the Malawi rift, and the seismic ha ...[Read More]

Minds over Methods: Mineral reactions in the lab

EGU Guest blogger March 4, 2019

CL image of a sheared quartz-muscovite gouge. Credit: André Niemeijer.

Mineral reactions in the lab André Niemeijer, Assistant Professor, Department of Earth Sciences at Utrecht University, the Netherlands In this blogpost we will go on a tour of the High Pressure and Temperature (HPT) Laboratory at Utrecht University and learn about some of the interesting science done there. André’s main interest is fault friction and all the various processes that are invol ...[Read More]