The rates at which fault zones “heal” through secondary mineralization have been elusive, but uranium-thorium dating of calcite growth in fault-zone fractures may provide the answer.
Plate tectonics
Posted inNews
The Layered Legacy of Clyde Wahrhaftig
As the geologist’s beloved guidebook gets a digital makeover, his personal contributions to the field shed light on who he was as a scientist.
Posted inFeatures
Three Times Tectonics Changed the Climate
Fifty years after the birth of modern plate tectonics theory, a group of researchers highlights three key examples of how our planet’s shape-shifting outer layer has altered our climate.
Posted inFeatures
Will Earth’s Grandest Canyon Keep Getting Grander?
Living in Geologic Time: Rafting through the past, present, and future of the Colorado River and the Grand Canyon.
Posted inEditors' Vox
How Chemical Processes Influence Fracture Pattern Development
Many tools of chemical analysis, experimentation, modeling, and theory have the potential to increase our understanding of how fracture patterns develop at different geological time scales.
Posted inNews
A New Dimension to Plate Tectonics
New tools to model and visualize subduction zones in 3-D are providing researchers with insights into the gaps inherent in the theory of plate tectonics.
Posted inNews
Podcast: Plate Tectonics, the Theory That Changed Earth Science
Third Pod from the Sun talks with pioneering geophysicist Xavier Le Pichon about what it was like to be a young scientist challenging deeply held theories.
![Figure 4 from paper by Preuss et al. [2019]](https://i0.wp.com/eos.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/2019JB017324-Figure-4-sized.png?resize=820%2C615&ssl=1)
Posted inEditors' Highlights
Can We Tell If Faults Grew During or Between Earthquakes?
Numerical simulations of earthquake cycle deformation reveal that co-seismic and interseismic fault propagation can produce distinct propagation angles that may be recorded in the crust.
Posted inAGU News
This Is How the World Moves
In October, we celebrate AGU’s Centennial by looking under our feet, where the relatively new study of plate tectonics is evolving rapidly.
Posted inNews
How Volcanic Mountains Cool the Climate
Though coastal plutons spew greenhouse gases into the atmosphere as they form, they also pull some of those gases back out of the atmosphere as they break down over time.