Continental Tectonics (1980) / Chapter Skim
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Overview and Recommendations
Overview and Recommendations
Pages 3-12
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From page 3... ...
As we increase our demands on the earth and seek to increase `~r ability to predict or mitigate the instabilities we moist improve over knowledge ofthe basic tectonic framework and processes involved in the forrnation and modification of continental angst. Tectonics is a branch of the earth sciences dealing with the origin, en oblation.
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From page 4... ...
Although the challenge is scientific, we can anticipate practical consequences because the improved unclerstanding should enlarge and strengthen the framework in which we view resources, resource exploration, waste storage, and geological hazard prediction. The time scale for policy decisions that clepend on a geophysical, geological, and geochemical knowledge base is far shorterthan the time scale for developing that knowleclge base.
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From page 5... ...
However, the results of plate motions over long time periods have led to estimates of average rates and to workable models of mountain building, birth and destruction of oceans, distribution of faunal provinces, paleoclimate, evolution of the crust and mantle, and a great variety of other phenomena that reach into every field of earth and related sciences. The understanding of plate tectonics is dependent on a multidisciplinary approach to develop broad concepts further, to establish their limitations, and to identify geological phenomena that require supplementary or complementary models.
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From page 6... ...
Because the continents contain most of the geological record, it is to them that we must turn to detennine the variations in geological processes through time. Reliable scientific answers to societal problems related to the earth will depend on an improved unclerstanding of continental tectonics.
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From page 7... ...
The importance of technology for the earth sciences is reviewed in detail in an earlier report of the Geophysics Study Committee, Impact of Technology on Geophysics. This report also reviews many examples of the recent innovations in the four broad categories of technology and their application within the earth sciences.
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From page 8... ...
has prepared a report, Geodynamics in the 1980's, that emphasizes crustal dynamics, particularly the dynamics ofthe continents as a framework for unclerstancling resource systems and natural hazards. The used prepared a more specific report, Continental Scientific Drilling Program, that is particularly relevant to understanding continental tectonics; the report recommends a national effort that focuses primarily on obtaining greater scientific return from the large amount of ongoing drilling for specific mission purposes in federal agencies, as well as a limited amount of Uniting for broader scientific purposes.
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From page 9... ...
This workshop was largely motivated by the symposium on Continental Tectonics organized by the Geophysics Study Committee at the American Geophysical Union meeting in April 1978. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA'S)
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From page 10... ...
Geodynamics Committee Geophysics Research Board, National Research Council. National Academy of Sciences.
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From page 11... ...
Committee on Seismology 'national Research Council. National Academy of Sciences, Washington, D.C.
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