Tectonics and Structural Geology

TS Must-Read – Lister and Davis (1989) The origin of metamorphic core complexes and detachment faults formed during Tertiary continental extension in the northern Colorado River region, USA

The Must-read team September 6, 2021

Lister and Davis (1989) is a seminal article for core complexes and detachment faults, cited well over a thousand times. The authors describe geometry and kinematics of core complexes, cropping out in the USA, which result from lithosphere extension. The paper carefully describes the main detachment fault separating lower plate from upper extending plate and discusses the role of granitoid intrusi ...[Read More]

Tektonika Diamond Open Access Journal

David Fernández-Blanco September 1, 2021

In a nutshell Tektonika is a community-led Diamond Open Access journal (DOAJ) for tectonics and structural geology launching in early 2022. The journal will publish high quality peer-reviewed research that is free for authors and readers, offering an alternative to long-standing publishing models that conceal knowledge dissemination behind paid subscriptions. Community involvement is at Tektonika’ ...[Read More]

Mind your Head: Five tips on mindful productivity at work

Elenora van Rijsingen July 15, 2021

Photo from the page of a book, with an out of focus green background. The text on the page reads: 'Productivity, making the hours in the day go further. The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing - Steven Covey'.

Productivity. 'The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing' - Steven Covey. Credit: Krisna Iv. Distributed via Unsplash

This Mind your Head blog post is a follow-up from Maria Scheel’s talk during the latest short course around mental health at #vEGU21. Before guiding a wonderful mindfulness pop-up event, Maria talked about how she struggled with unrealistic expectations, feeling insufficient and alone as a PhD student during the last lockdown. She turned this around by radically redefining her motivation, goals an ...[Read More]

TS Must-Read – Sylvester (1988) Strike-slip faults

The Must-read team June 30, 2021

Strike-slip faults by Arthur Sylvester (1988) is a must-read paper for anyone, and more so for those who want to understand the mechanisms of strike-slip faulting. Although it mostly refers to the San Andreas fault, the most studied strike-slip fault at the time (and possibly to date), the contribution is a comprehensive review of the state of the art about strike-slip faults in general. Sylvester ...[Read More]

TS Must-read – Dewey (1988) Extensional collapse of orogens

The Must-read team June 25, 2021

After building orogens with Dewey and Bird (1970) and extending them during building with Platt (1986), Dewey (1988) explores the lifetime of orogens in their last breath: their extensional collapse. Simple considerations on how to form a normally-thick continental crust (30-40 km) from a thickened continental domain (50-60 km) indicate that erosion of the topography alone is far from being suffic ...[Read More]

Features from the Field: Stretching Lineations

Samuele Papeschi and Hannah Davies June 21, 2021

Measuring stretching lineations is the base to understanding the kinematics of large structures, like this protomylonitic metasandstone from a shear zone in the Glengarry Basin (Western Australia). Rocks slid past each other either up or down along this lineation. Which way? We need to look at a section oriented parallel to this lineation. Photo by Rolinator via wikimedia.org.

Deep beneath our feet, deformation of rocks at high temperature produces impressive structures such as shear zones, that localize the movement of two volumes of rock with respect to one another. Shear zones are strongly deformed bands with strongly foliated structures (i.e., with rocks that look like a pile of leaves) and kinematic indicators, such as S-C fabrics, that tell us geologists which way ...[Read More]

TS Must-Read – Molnar and Lyon-Caen (1988): Some simple physical aspects of the support, structure and evolution of mountain belts

The Must-read team June 2, 2021

In 1988 Peter Molnar and Hélène Lyon-Caen published their “Must-Read” paper on the support, structure and evolution of mountain belts. It is an article that touches on some core issues of plate tectonics by looking at two types of forces that resist mountain building, using key observations from Asian and American mountain chains. They name the first force “mechanical strength”, and to approximate ...[Read More]

Features from the Field: S-C fabrics

Sandra McLaren, Samuele Papeschi and Hannah Davies May 19, 2021

As we have seen in previous Features from the field posts, structural fabrics are both informative and spectacular. But many structural geologists will list a shear zone fabric, such as mylonite, as their favourite! As Samuele, Hannah and I wrote in a previous post, shear zones are regions of intense deformation where rocks have accommodated an extremely high amount of strain and that strain has b ...[Read More]

TS Must-Read – Platt (1986): Dynamics of orogenic wedges and the uplift of high-pressure metamorphic rocks

The Must-read team May 12, 2021

Orogens are the locus of intense deformation and metamorphism, mainly caused by convergent tectonics and burial. Yet, deeply buried rocks – metamorphosed at high pressure (HP) – are customarily met at the surface, even in “recent” systems such as the Alps. The long-standing question is naturally “how are these rocks brought back to the surface?” At the time John Platt wrote his manuscr ...[Read More]

Geology Bites Podcast

Oliver Strimpel May 7, 2021

Podcast conversations about geology with researchers making key contributions to our understanding of the Earth and the Solar System I have always wanted to grasp the widest spatial and temporal context in which we find ourselves. After completing a physics degree at Cambridge University, this led me to cosmology, and a PhD on the structure of clusters of galaxies at Oxford University. I then join ...[Read More]