Includes the following sessions:
EA36: Igneous processes and climate change over all of Earth history
Volcanism and igneous activity have led to weather and climate change on time scales ranging from billions of years to hours. With recent climate change impacting the destiny of our planet, petrologists have important contributions to make in understanding how Earth's climate is evolving. This session welcomes presentations on how igneous activity created Earth's earliest environments through to how historical eruptions impacted weather and climate.
Includes the following post-conference one-day short courses:
Large igneous province research frontiers (including resource explanation and climate change)
Date: 22 June
Facilitator: Richard Ernst (richard.ernst@ernstgeosciences.com)
This one-day short course will provide a provide a ‘state of the art’ training in all aspect of Large Igneous Provinces (LIPs) with a focus on research frontiers related to resource exploration and environmental/ climate change. The basics will be covered in the morning sessions: continental and oceanic flood basalts and their plumbing systems (layered intrusions, sills, dykes & deep crustal underplating). There will be an overview of additional topics: Archean LIPs, planetary analogues, associated Silicic LIPs (SLIPs), carbonatites and kimberlites, origin (plume & alternatives), links to continental breakup and the supercontinent cycle, geochemistry, associated topographic effects (regional uplift & basin formation) & associated compressional tectonics. The afternoon sessions will first focus on links with resource implications (metallogeny, oil/gas and aquifer systems). The links with a broad range of commodity types are captured in our 5-part classification system and we will also present our latest strategies for using the LIPs record in multi-commodity, multi-scale exploration targeting. The second afternoon focus will be on the rapidly developing links with dramatic environmental & climate change including mass extinction events. We summarize the latest research on the role of LIPs (and SLIPs) in dramatically changing atmospheric and oceanic composition through time, including global warming, glaciations, anoxia, step-wise oxygenation, acid rain/ocean acidification, enhanced hydrothermal and terrestrial nutrient fluxes, and mercury poisoning.