Research Goals

Our long-range goal is to build a system that enables fundamental advances in our understanding of collision-related responses - asthenospheric flow, thermal state, and partial melting, and lithospheric shearing, thrusting, rifting, and vertical motions. A better understanding of these relationships is therefore important to the interpretation of earthquake and volcano patterns at the Earth's surface and has the potential for radically changing our perceptions of continental lithosphere accretion.