Support for Analog Modeling of Tectonic Processes Workshop

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ThisThis project provides funding for travel support for U.S. researchers and students to attend a workshop on "Analog Modeling of Tectonic Processes" to be held in Austin, Texas, in early May of 2017. The workshop builds on a successful workshop on this topic held in 2015. Analog model experiments contribute substantially to the understanding of tectonic processes. In these experiments, weaker materials (sand, clay, etc.) take the place rocks and are deformed at high strain rates under controlled conditions thus producing scale models of the development of earth structures (faults, folds) and large-scale tectonic features (mountain belts, rift systems). The aim of this workshop is to bring together the tectonics analog modeling community to discuss future directions in the field, build collaborations with computer-based modelers, and develop curriculum materials. The workshop participants include experimentalists, computer modelers, students, and instructors who use analog models in their classrooms. The workshop will promote the analog modeling skills of early career researchers, thereby developing the future workforce in tectonics. The workshop will promote the participation of students, early career scientists, and researchers from underrepresented groups in the earth sciences.The past 10 years have seen a revolution within analog modeling of crustal deformation spurred by systematic rheological testing of analog materials and use of laser and image processing techniques for data analysis leading to a strengthening of the quantitative aspect of analog modeling. The vanguard of this revolution has been in Europe where laboratories have been implementing new approaches that permit greater control on experimental conditions, more accurate scaling of deformation and improved insights into the evolution of deformation and deformation processes. This multi-day workshop gathers leading US and international geoscientists who use analog and numerical modeling to discuss techniques that are revolutionizing experimental modeling, as well as challenges for performing and analyzing scaled experiments. This workshop provides a unique and largely informal opportunity for researchers to share some of their best practices. As a mechanism to foster idea-sharing, a half-day physical experiment followed by a half-day numerical analysis will be performed to encourage the entire group to engage in experimental set-up, trouble shooting, data gathering and analysis and to sensitize each community to the needs of the other. Curriculum material developed for the workshop will be freely available through the Science Education Resource Center.