Margins: A Research Initiative for Interdisciplinary Studies of the Processes Attending Lithospheric Extension and Convergence

Approximately 70 per cent of the world’s population is concentrated in the coastal borderlands, which geologists recognize to be the present continental margins. This new book on these continental margins provides a detailed account of a meeting, which brought together specialists in marine and terrestrial geology, geochemistry, and geophysics. The workshop garnered widespread support and enthusiasm for a new direction in margins research focused on interdisciplinary studies of the fundamental processes of continental margin evolution. Scientific problems and solutions were identified for both divergent and convergent margins. Results of the workshop show that many of the fundamental plate interaction processes are common to all margins, whether formed by extension, contraction, or translation. This conclusion suggests a unified approach to margins research. A margins initiative has been proposed to follow up on the workshop results by developing science programs aimed at understanding the processes that control the initiation and evolution of continental margins.