[iris-bulk] SSSA Rio Grande Rift and its Margins Special Session

[IRIS]

Dear Colleagues,

I would like to kindly draw your attention to the following session  
at the upcoming April 2008 SSA Annual Meeting in Santa Fe (see:   
http://www.seismosoc.org/meetings/2008/specialsessions.html ).

Please note that the session is broadly construed to include both the  
rift and its intriguing interactions with and relevance to the  
evolution of the surrounding Southern Rocky Mountains, Southern Basin  
and Range, Colorado Plateau, and Great Plains provinces.

The abstract deadline here is January 11.  Feel free to contact me or  
a co-convener should you have any questions.

Best,
Rick Aster



Extensional Seismotectonics of the Rio Grande Rift and its Margins

The Rio Grande Rift is one of Earth’s best studied extensional zones   
of continental rifting. Rift and rift margin processes associated   
with the adjacent non-extended Colorado Plateau and Great Plains   
tectonic provinces are notably reflected in seismicity,   
geomorphology, magmatism, heat flow, crustal thinning, mantle   
structure, and other geological and geophysical observables.  Recent   
work indicates that the rift system has evolved and is evolving in   
response to both ongoing mesoscale mantle processes and pre-existing   
lithosphere-scale heterogeneity.  Extension across the rift has been   
manifested in the shallow crust by large normal faulting earthquakes  
that have occurred every few hundred years in contrast to the short   
historical record which shows no events larger than magnitude 6.  
This  session will focus on extensional seismotectonic processes of  
the  rift and its adjoining provinces, as  elucidated by diverse  
studies  ranging from seismic imaging of mantle structure,  
investigations of  the seismogenic crust, contemporary seismicity,  
and paleoseismology.

Conveners

Richard Aster
New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, Socorro NM
aster [at] ees.nmt.edu

Ivan Wong
URS Corporation, Oakland CA
ivan_wong [at] urscorp.com

Scott Baldridge
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos NM
sbaldridge [at] lanl.gov

James Ni
New Mexico State University, Las Cruces NM
jni [at] nmsu.edu