Announcement: Fall AGU Salton Trough Session
Date: 08/05/2008
Forwarded AGU Session Announcement from Mike Oskin, UC Davis:
Recent Advances in Understanding the Gulf of California - Salton Trough Plate Boundary System: Along Strike and Through Time
We would like to draw your attention to a special session at the Fall AGU meeting that will examine the Gulf of California - Salton Trough MARGINS focus site. We encourage submission of abstracts on recent research and/or novel ideas from any relevant geoscience discipline, in the terrestrial or marine realms, that contributes to understanding this plate boundary over the past ~12 million years. Please share this announcement with interested people who might not have received this message.
SESSION T42: Recent Advances in Understanding the Gulf of California - Salton Trough Plate Boundary System: Along Strike and Through Time
CONVENERS: Paul J. Umhoefer (paul.umhoefer@nau.edu), Michael Oskin (oskin@geology.ucdavis.edu), Rebecca Dorsey (rdorsey@uoregon.edu), Joann Stock (jstock@gps.caltech.edu)
DESCRIPTION: The Gulf of California - Salton Trough is an active oblique-divergent plate boundary. Despite similar rates of relative plate motion along strike, major differences in rifting style have been expressed along the boundary and through time since 12 Ma. Many parameters and processes along the plate boundary may have affected rifting style, including strain partitioning, localization of strain, width of rift domains, and the role of magmatism, low-angle normal faults, and sediment flux in surface to upper mantle processes. The Colorado River has produced a large sediment flux since 5 Ma that dominates the north while the south is sediment-starved. The role of varying climate and tectonics is an emerging research theme as the boundary spans from temperate to tropical zones. The total offset across the plate boundary and its temporal development is controversial. How the northern part of the system in the Salton trough ties northward into the broader Pacific - North America boundary is also incompletely understood. This session welcomes contributions from recent research or novel ideas from any relevant research, terrestrial or marine, that contributes to understanding this plate boundary over the past 12 million years.
