Workshop Description

Rifting produces diverse extensional styles resulting in contrasting margin widths, degree of conjugate asymmetry, predominance of brittle or ductile deformation, intensity and location of magmatism, and type of transition towards seafloor spreading. The structure and evolution of the shallow-water sectors of margins have been studied for many decades with abundant drilling and geophysical data that provide reasonable knowledge of their geology and evolution and their models are conceptually well established. However, their extension into deep-water systems are comparatively less investigated and far less understood.

While the continental basement of some deep-water systems expands across wide regions, their transition to oceanic crust is abrupt (e.g. the South China Sea). In contrast, others deep-water margins with a narrow continental region exhibit a broad domain of exhumed mantle before reaching magmatic oceanic crust (e.g. the West Iberia-Newfoundland). Classical models of rifting fail to explain the structure of these deep-water systems, their syn- and post-tectonic stratigraphy, and the distribution of major erosional unconformities. The different structural and sedimentary architectures possibly relate to still poorly-defined thermal evolution and subsidence patterns that distinctly influence the various deep-water systems. 

In this workshop we aim at examining new observations and numerical models to discuss the main factors controlling the diversity in margin evolution. Some of these factors may include inheritance, the influence of the 3D nature of rifting, rift-plume or rift-subduction interaction, and feedbacks between sedimentation/erosion and deformation. Studies maybe focused at a given margin or compare structural styles of different extensional areas.

We aim at pin-pointing different aspects that may be important and create an international task force dedicated to the integrative investigation of these questions.

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