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I want to begin this message by thanking everyone involved in the 1996 Annual Meeting for all their effort and the result of their efforts, a great meeting. Most of the newsworthy items from the meeting are contained in this "Newsletter" elsewhere so I won't add much here. We had some scheduling snafus that resulted from a combination of this being the biggest GSA ever plus some mistakes by Vicki and I at JTPC (Joint Technical Program Committee) -- in our defense we were both rookies at this, although I should have caught some of these from having dealt with the program before. Nonetheless, I heard nothing but praise for the Division-sponsored short courses and I know the Division symposium was well received. The business meeting this year was highlighted, as usual, by the awards ceremony but in this case there were some particularly pleasurable moments because of the personalities involved. The student research awards this year went to Mark Hemphill-Haley (University of Oregon) and Oliver Vanderhaeghe (University of Minnesota). We had the pleasure this year of presenting two "Best Paper awards -- a consequence of not giving an award in the previous year and the help of you, the membership, for making many excellent nominations! The 1995 Award went to Steve Wojtal with the citation by Bill Dunne and the 1996 award went to John Suppe, G. Chou and S. Hook with Rick Allmendinger giving the citation (see citations and acceptance speeches in this "Newsletter"). A great pleasure for many of us came with the presentation of the Career Contribution Award, which this year went to Win Means with the citation by Declan DePaor (following GSA policy, this citation and response will appear in GSA Today ). From the response of people at the meeting I think there was a universal opinion that we had the perfect candidate for the award, yet Win in his usual style accepted the award with great humility and dignity.

For the rest of this message I want to take up a subject started in the last "Newsletter" by John Bartley regarding concerns for the future of the Division, and I'll add, GSA. You can take these ramblings for what they are worth, opinion. However, my purpose is to solicit opinions on both changes that are occurring and things that might be needed.

As I look back on the roughly 25 years that I've been in geology, I find it incredible what we have learned over that time period. This, of course, was largely brought about when plate tectonics revolutionized the earth sciences. Plate tectonics not only produced a revolution in the way we look at the earth, but also in the way we analyze the earth as a global system and interact as a community of scientists. In the past many geologists concentrated on quadrangle scales, and tectonics was largely what we might now call regional geology. Plate tectonics requires us to look at earth systems on all scales, and also taught geologists the importance of

integrating geophysical data and physical models into studies aimed at understanding processes in the earth's interior. Indeed, were it not for critical geophysical data collected in the 1950's and 60's, we would probably still be like the blind men looking at pieces of the elephant instead of considering the whole beast. More recently, quantitative models have provided new insights into how the earth works and as computer technology improves -- particularly software development -- these approaches will undoubtedly balloon even further. An upshot of this is that the distinction between what we would classically call "geology" versus what we would call "geophysics" has blurred to the point that the distinction in many cases is meaningless. Sure, there are still branches of "geophysics" that none of us would have a clue about -- e.g. have you ever been to one of the space physics sessions at AGU? Nonetheless, in the solid earth sciences, I think this is a fair statement, and it is reflected in things like name changes of academic departments to "geosciences" vs "geology" or "geophysics".

Despite this muddying of the distinction between geology and geophysics, there persists a strange polarization of our field that largely reflects these outdated distinctions. What is the real distinction between a geologist studying tectonics and a geophysicist studying tectonics? Ideally, none. The realities, however, seem to be that whenever something involves quantitative data or models we call it geophysics and if it involves geologic mapping or a discussion of a geologic/tectonic history we call it geology. There also seems to persist a long held myth that quantitative results ("geophysics") are somehow naturally better and more important than qualitative results. I've personally never been math phobic -- I even have an identical twin who writes papers primarily in equations and I've written a few modeling papers myself. Nonetheless, people who work on qualitative problems shouldn't be bullied by this myth because I frankly feel there is more information in the rock record than in most geophysical data, if we could unambiguously understand what that record is telling us.

The point is that this distinction between geology and geophysics is important because it carries over into the way we do business in this organization. Having watched the development of the GSA Annual Meeting program over the last few years, first on Program Committee and this year on JTPC as duties of this office, I've seen a trend that I find disturbing. It seems that in tectonics sessions at GSA--and this is not necessarily true of structure--there are fewer and fewer "quantitative" papers and GSA seems to be becoming the home for the qualitative presentations on the tectonic history of area A based on various brand X studies of such and such a place. We of course all know where those "geophysics" presentations have gone because the Fall AGU meeting is filled with those kind of presentations -- and those kinds of presentations are mixed with more and more "geologic" style presentations at AGU. I am convinced that this is a significant factor in the declining membership of the Division and if the trend continues the Division, and GSA with it, is looking at a grim future. Basically, I think we need to get a better balance of quantitative ("geophysical?") papers and qualitative ("geologic?") papers at GSA, or tectonics -- like a number of other things that used to come to GSA -- will end up entirely at AGU.

Much of this problem goes way back as the AGU meeting has gradually eroded some of the old GSA traditions. GSA headquarters has even developed a paranoia about the "other organization" because so many of its members are "switch hitters". Indeed, the rise and fall of attendance at the GSA Annual Meeting is usually directly correlated to attendance at AGU because most of us can't afford two meetings. GSA has tried very hard to remove some of the old barriers -- real or perceived -- that members saw as a factor leading to people's choice of attending GSA vs AGU. The biggest one happened only very recently with the change in abstract review policy -- many people may not be aware that as of the Denver meeting, the GSA now has effectively the same review policy as AGU on abstracts. With the advent of that change, one would hope that the two meetings might become increasingly similar, but the present pattern suggests that may not be the case.

Thus, I would like to ask some questions of you, the SG&T membership, that are relevant to these ramblings.

First, do you think my perception of the Annual Meeting is real? If not, maybe you can let me know your thoughts on what really is right or wrong in the present system. If you think my perception is real, do you have any thoughts about what the Division, or GSA in general, could do to reverse this problem?

Second, at the division chairperson's breakfast in Denver there was a lot of talk of changing division structure at GSA, including the possibility of requiring membership in a division. These changes might be extremely important for structure and tectonics because it would end the present "entitlement system" where only divisions are allowed to organize symposia at the Annual Meetings but each division, regardless of size, is entitled to only one symposium. The present system has been wonderful for tiny divisions, but stifling for large divisions like SG&T -- and may be partially to blame for some of the problems that I noted above. I firmly believe that if a wider net were cast in symposia, many of the "geophysics" crowd would attend GSA more often. Other changes afoot for the Annual Meeting include a major change in the Program committee -- the group that oversees the meeting. That committee will soon be a national committee rather than the present committee which has a rotating membership from past, present and future technical program chairs. If both of these changes come about I frankly think that my concerns above can be easily addressed by some careful programming plans for the Annual Meeting. Do you think these changes will help, or do you think there are other problems that run far deeper than this? If you think these changes will help, I strongly encourage you to contact GSA with your opinions. They do listen -- admittedly sometimes at geologic rates -- but unless we let our opinions be known nothing will happen.

Third, division membership in all of GSA, including SG&T, is at an all time low. John Bartley noted this problem in the last "Newsletter", and we got a lot of comments back on that issue. Some comments I agreed with and others I disagreed with, but we certainly appreciate all the folks who gave us input. I took an informal poll at the Annual Meeting on this issue -- which was by no means quantitative since I just randomly asked anyone I knew if they were Division members and if not why not. The most common answer I got from people who had dropped out of the Division is that they didn't see what they got out of Division membership that justified the expense. Most GSA members are surprisingly unaware of exactly what the

divisions do for them. One clear indication of that occurred this year with a trial change on the abstract form where authors had to check two boxes: 1) category (standard list of 32 subjects) and 2) who reviewed your abstract (list of divisions and associated societies). The result was astonishing. A huge percentage of the abstracts were directed to completely different reviewers than the traditional sorting of 32 categories, and one of the biggest reviewers chosen was "at large representative" (traditionally, the at large representative gets only abstracts that GSA couldn't figure out what to do with). Clearly the Society membership doesn't recognize one of the biggest functions of the divisions -- scheduling the Annual Meeting program. The Management Board is very concerned about some of these things and their effect on the Division. We are doing a few things this year to try to increase visibility of the Division. For example, we will add some social functions at section meetings and we're trying to make improvement to the Division home page -- an important item for many is a new "jobs" field where job offerings will be posted on the home page. Obviously the "Newsletter" is the most conspicuous thing that people get out of being a member of the Division. I think everyone really appreciates the great job that Greg Davis has done on the "Newsletter", and we hope it will be even better with Scott Wilkerson on board as a Co-Editor. Nonetheless, short of major changes in the GSA division system, what do you think the Division can do to make membership "worth the money" for a broader membership in the society?

If you have any strong opinions one way or the other on these issues, please let us know at the management board, or share your ideas with the membership by sending them to the "Newsletter" editors for our September issue. I respond best by e-mail and it is easy to circulate comments to the Management Board that way as well, but if you're stuck to paper, please send me comments that way as well. Obviously many of us have a real fondness for GSA and the Division, so any suggestions you have for things that we can do to help the system work better please let us know.

Terry L. Pavlis, Department of Geology and Geophysics, University of New Orleans, New Orleans, LA 70148. Email: tpavlis@geology.uno.edu; phone: (504) 280- 6797; fax: (504) 280-7396. 

1 . The new second vice-chair for the Division if Steve Marshak. The current chair is Terry Pavlis who replaces J ohn Bartley. The first vice-chair is now Vicki Hansen. 

2. Treasurers Report: The proj ected balance for the Division, after expenses associated with the Annual Meeting should be approximately $11,500. The D ivision continues to accumulate funds at a level of approximately $1000 - $1500 per year. 

3. There was a discussion of whether the Division should nominate any of I ts members for GSA officers or councilo rs. It was noted that the SG&T Division has traditionally been well represented on the Council. 

4. It was announced that Greg Davis would be stepping down as Divisional " Newsletter " editor. Happily, since the meeting Greg has reconsidered and we will continue to have the benefit of his ser vices. The Management Board praised Greg highly for his work. 

5. The procedures for the operation o f the Career Contribution Award Committee was discussed. It was decided that once nominated, an individual would remain an active nomi nee for four years. After that time, another nomination would be required for that individual to be considered for the award. 

6. We continued to discuss proc edures for the Best paper Award Committee. Now that the committee is newly reconstituted, we need to guarante e that a rotating membership is establish -ed so that all members do not leave the committee in a single year. 

7. Plans for the 1997 Annual M eeting were discussed:

A. The Divisional short courses will be "Three Dimensional Modeling of Deformation" by Basil Tikoff and Stev e Wojtal and "Interpretation of Veins in Sedimentary Rocks" by Dave Wiltschko.

B. The Division-sponsored sy mposium will be " Exhumation of High-Pressure Terranes" to be convened by Brad Hacker.

C. We discussed the need to reach o ut to structural geologists and tectonicists in the oil companies. Ma rk Hempton (Shell) attended the meeting and gave us his insight. It was suggested that we consider holding a theme session on 3-dimensio nal seismic imaging of deformed regions or some similar topic of great in terest to petroleum geologists. We also discussed regularly inviting a m ember of the petroleum industry to the annual Management Board meetings. 

8. We had a brief discussion of the Di vision WWW Homepage. For those who have yet to visit this site, we urge you to do so (see website address below). Ben van der Pluijm has done a remarkable job on t his project and the Division in indebted to him.

9. There was a brief discussion of t he membership of the Division. Membership had declined by approximately 1/3 between 1990 and 1995. There was a slight increase in me mbership from 1995 to 1996. An examination of recent Division a l members who have dropped their membership showed that the largest departing grou p is graduate students who were no longer active in the field, perhaps having moved on to jobs in the environmental industry. The second largest group is international members, and the third is employees or former employees of the USGS.

Arthur Goldstein , Division Secretary, Department of Geology , Colgate Univ ersity, 
Hamilton, N.Y. 13346 . Phone: (315) 824-7203; fax: (315) 824-7187; email: agoldstein@center.colgate.edu 

Announcing a new service on the SG&T Division's homepage ...

If you, your academic department, business, or organization have a job opening (tenure-track, post-doc, temporary, etc.) in structural geology or tectonics or a related field, send your announcement by email to me, Ben van der Pluijm (vdpluijm@umich.edu) and it will be added to our new "JOBS" page. The announcements will be included in the order in which they are received, and they will be removed after the application deadline (or upon request of the announcement's originator).

Help the Division's student members and yourself with this employment service at

The Division's homepage address is:

It also can be reached through the GSA's homepage (http://www.geosociety.org/index.htm.) under its "Divisions" link. On the page you will find information about the Division and its officers, events sponsored by the Division, a "Newsletter" archive, upcoming meetings, and a host of links that might be of interest to the SG&T community. Like any Web project, this page is continually being evolved, updated and modified, largely based on your contributions and responses. If you have any comments and/or useful additions to the page, please phonel me. Also, don't hesitate to give me your feedback on failing links and slow connections. I look forward to hearing from you.
Ben van der Pluijm, Dept. of Geological Sciences, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1063. Email (see above); phone: (313) 764-1435.

It is a great pleasure to announce that Scott Wilkerson of DePauw University and Greg Davis will serve as Co-Editors for the "Newsletter". Because of this year's travel and work-related responsibilities, Greg has assumed prime responsibility for the March issue, and Scott, for the September issue. Together, we expect to see continuing changes and improvements in the "Newsletter". It is your publication and its success in no small part relies upon contributions from Division members. Personal opinions and comments on topics of interest to the Division are always welcome. The professional and technical opinions of Terry Pavlis, Bob Hatcher, David Pollard and Atilla Aydin in this issue are fine examples of such contributions. Special thanks to Tom Wright and Steve Schimmrich for their continuing informative columns on NSF and the WWW, respectively, to John Bartley and Pinar Yilmaz for book reviews, and to the many members who supplied news and information for this issue. Students have a special (but little used) forum for their opinions in "THE RAP COLUMN." Please send us announcements of forthcoming special events, keep us informed about career changes by you or others for the "HAVE YOU HEARD ... ?" column, and let us know of not-for-profit offerings for the "RESOURCE BIN". Contributions and suggestions for this issue's new column "STRUCTURAL GEOLOGY AND TECTONICS IN INDUSTRY" are enthusiastically invited. Your opinions on "Newsletter" content and suggestions for other types of material or articles that you would find useful in future issues are especially valuable to us. The deadline for inclusion of materials in the next issue will be in late July. Please send lengthy items on a Mac diskette if possible ("Word 5.1" is preferred), or transmit via direct email or as a Eudora/Fetch attachment (Microsoft Mac Word preferred), or simply fax for shorter items

Greg Davis, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0740; phone (213) 740-6726; fax (213) 740-8801; email: gdavis@usc.edu

Scott Wilkerson, Department of Geology and Geography, DePauw University, Greencastle, IN 46135; phone (765) 658-4666; fax (765) 658-4177; email: mswilke@DEPAUW.EDU

Editors' note: This is an initial attempt at developing a section of the "Newsletter" devoted to structure and tectonics happenings in industry. Our idea is to establish a forum for Division members in which industry insiders can freely share and disseminate non-proprietary information with each other and the membership in general. Contributions might take the form of short news briefs or might be more detailed columns expounding on some aspect of recent research. Hopefully, these contributions will work to build bridges that can help nurture collaborative efforts within different sectors of the Division membership. Examples of contributions could include, but are not limited to: research directions, collaborative experiences, job opportunities, useful software, etc. -- basically, anything that might be of interest to other Division members which one could openly share while talking "shop" over dinner or at a meeting. In this first column, content is strongly skewed to reflect my (Wilkerson's) contacts in the petroleum industry and related fields for whom I have email addresses. We would welcome contributions from other sources (and other industries). If you would like to contribute something in the future, please send an email to Scott Wilkerson. In a future "Newsletter", we have columns promised that will discuss (1) successful industry-academia collaborations and what makes them work, and (2) recent advances on 3D fault related folds by an industry-academia consortium.

Scott Wilkerson, mswilke@DEPAUW.EDU

News from Shell Oil Company (Houston) indicates that their structural geology R&D group is actively growing. The recent addition of 5 professionals, combined with advances in three-dimensional seismic technology and incredible growths in computing power, has empowered Shell to directly image, interpret and model complex structures in three dimensions. New results are demonstrating that our classical assumptions of geometric, kinematic, and even mechanical analyses are roughly analogous to Wegener's continental drift hypotheses -- more or less correct in principal, but based on inadequate data, and blissfully ignorant of the scale of the problem and the implications! E&P divisions of Shell and other oil companies are feeling starved for new "competitive advantages" after the dearth of basic research of recent years, so there is significant internal motivation to conduct basic research. Shell R&D is currently applying the above technologies to investigate problems involving extensional structures (U.S. Gulf Coast), contractional and/or transpressional structures (deep water Gulf of Mexico, W. Texas Permian, Colombian Andes), and structural features in Australia, Brunei, England, Oman, Norway and The Netherlands with their research team at The Hague.

Midland Valley is offering its fault-related fold modeling packages to non-profit organizations at significant discounts. 3DMove is a geological modelling software program which allows users to build, visualize and validate three-dimensional computer models of fault-related folds using vertical or inclined shear and flexural slip. 2DMove performs similar functions on cross sections. 3DMove runs on certain Silicon Graphics and Sun UltraSPARC workstations, whereas 2DMove operates on PC, Silicon Graphics, and Sun platforms. Division members interested in Midland Valley's offer should contact Scott Wilkerson for particulars.

Midland Valley and the University of Keele are coordinating a three-year, 1.9 million dollar research effort on 3D flexural flow sponsored in part by Amoco, Arco, Enterprise Oil, Elf Geoscience Research, British Gas, Exxon Production Research, Texaco Exploration and Production, BEB Erdgas und Erdöl Gmbh and GFZ Potsdam. Their team is working on developing true 3D algorithms to model deformation of rocks over arbitrary faults in 3D where hanging-wall deformation over flat-ramp-flat fault geometries (with dips less than 30 degrees) is true flexural slip in plane strain sections. Early results of this collaboration have produced a 3D 'flow'-based flexural flatten routine which maintains area during restoration to a datum. In addition, a plane strain 3D flexural flow algorithm also has been completed and is currently being tested on compressional data sets.

What a difference a year makes. When we sat down to write this article last year, Washington was receiving the biggest snowfall in decades and the government, including NSF, was being regularly shut-down and given short reprieves -- and not because of the weather. This year, it's record-breaking balmy temperatures in January and more or less normal operations of the Earth Sciences Division, including a budget from Congress by October 1, the start of the fiscal year.

The December deadline produced 96 proposals for tectonics, requesting a total of $13,047,912. Active Tectonics received another 21, requesting a total of $2,755,465. Budgets for both are flat from last year, ($6.8 and $1.2 million, respectively) but things could be worse. There is money for well-conceived projects and with your help, and the help of the panels, we will fund as many of the best as possible. With this level of competition however, it is important to "know the rules" under which your proposal is evaluated. This brings me to the subject of proposal review, as promised in last time's article.

What happens between the time you or your research office rushes the 20 copies of your proposal off to your friendly overnight delivery service and many months later when you find out the results? Last time we sketched the various steps, so this time we'll look in detail at one of the really important steps, that is, how do we go about selecting reviewers for proposals? This is important, because these are the people that must be convinced by the proposal. Our initial job as " Program Directors" is to find a reasonable number (5 or 6, normally) of reviewers who "cover" the various aspects of the proposal, but who do not work with the proposers or have other conflicts of interest, who have no particular reason to be unfair, and who will actually be willing to take the time to read the proposal and prepare (and send in) a review. This sound simple enough, and it usually is, mainly because such a high percentage of the reviewer community are conscientious and do a good job with this important aspect.

Where do we get ideas for reviewers? Like editors looking for referees on manuscripts, we look through references, old proposals on similar subjects, suggestions made by proposers and people we have received reviews from in the past. You are potentially on the list if GEOREF says you have published on the subject. Sometimes we ask you to review even if you are not at a U.S. institution, but in a position to help. As we read each proposal, we jot down what the proposal is aiming at, the potential reviewers that occur to us, the identified conflicts etc. Typically, we wind up with 10 or more good prospects for qualified reviewers per proposal.

In Tectonics, proposals are read by one Program Director and at least scanned by the other before we decide on a final list. The final make-up is a compromise between coverage of the various components in a proposal, the number of qualified reviewers, the "saturation point" of reviewers (we try to limit the requests to two or fewer for each reviewer per cycle, but that is exceeded on occasion) and the likelihood of the reviewer actually returning a useful review.

When we mail out the review request packages, we want to think that we've covered the important components of the proposal. For example, a couple of reviewers might know the field area, but not the details of the analytical tools proposed, while we also selected an expert in one of the tools who probably has never seen the particular rocks involved. We try to ask the opinion of those who have a broad view of tectonic problems as well as those who have a more local focus. After we have decided on the reviewers for a particular proposal, we ask ourselves -- is this a good mix of reviewers for this proposal? If, within our constraints, we think so, off they go in the mail.

What we hope to get back from these reviewers, of course, are comments and scores that in aggregate, address knowledgeably all the aspects of the proposal. Comments about both overall importance or significance as well as regional or local impact are helpful, as are analyses of how applicable the methods are and whether the field area's attributes will allow the work to be done. It is comforting when the different reviewers' comments dovetail, and more or less reach the same conclusion. If every proposal wound up with such a balanced review, our job would be simple indeed.

Most of the time, the reviewers for Tectonics proposals come pretty close to this ideal, for which we are grateful. A consensus commonly emerges from reviewers who bring different perspectives to the task. It is also true that several things can and do happen to lower the quality of this part of the review process.

Probably the least useful review is no review at all. Of course everyone is busy, and there are times when reading a proposal and formulating a reasoned response is overwhelming. Still, this leaves a "hole" in our planned coverage of the proposal, in numbers of reviews, and in area of expertise. We would like to be able to call each potential reviewer before sending the review package, but we simply aren't staffed to do this. So, to compensate for the real possibility that we will not hear from everyone we asked, we do several things. If we know soon enough, we can re-send requests to other reviewers. NSF has a policy that three returned reviews, at a minimum, are required before Program Directors can make a recommendation. We think a responsible recommendation to fund or not can be made with only three reviews, provided they are from well-qualified and knowledgeable reviewers, that they are "meaty", well reasoned and articulated, and that they are balanced and reasonably consistent with each other. We are, naturally, a lot happier with basing decisions on the full set of reviews.

So, how do we go about getting satisfactory reviews for all our (or rather, your) proposals? History tell us that over 75% of reviews are returned. This results in some proposals having probably more input than the minimum required, most proposal having just enough, and 10-15% winding up with too few. Both program directors spend the last two weeks before panel meetings on the phone trying to complete these reviews. We do whatever is required, including such full-court-press tactics as express mailing copies to additional reviewers or even faxing proposals in desperate cases. We figure that the time of our reviewers that we waste with asking for more than the minimum number is balanced by our efforts to recover when we come up short! To increase our chances, we reluctantly stop asking for reviews from reviewers who never respond, and from reviewers who tell us that they refuse to accept NSF reviewing responsibilities.

Another, less clear-cut, but still important thing that happens, and causes the usefulness of reviews to be affected, is when reviews provide little substance along with a score. Believe it or not, we have received reviews that only said " This is a very good proposal", and to be sure we got the message, they checked the "very good" block on the form! OK, so it is a review, but for our purposes (not to mention the Principal Investigator's) it leaves something to be desired.

After everything is said and done, each proposal will have at least three reviews by panel time, but they commonly vary in number of reviews, in the aspects actually covered, in the quality of reviews, and importantly, in the degree to which they internally reach a consensus on the merit of a proposal. Imperfect or not, this is the starting point for our next task, and that of the panel -- namely to put the proposals into a priority order. Next time, we will address exactly how the reviews are used in the next step in the decision-making process, including what we do when reviews aren't ideal and when views expressed in reviews are hard to reconcile or are contradictory.

Rather often, reviewers ask us "How did I do on that review you sent me a while ago? Was I off base on what I said? Was it the sort of review you guys were looking for? Was it too different from the others?" Principal Investigators, on the other hand, commonly are concerned when there is a lot of differences in the reviews of their proposal. NSF would like to protect review anonymity, but here is an idea that might help reviewing quality and proposer satisfaction on reviews. Note that this is just an idea -- NSF does not have this as a policy now. If a proposer is unhappy with the review of a proposal (one review you really want to rebut out of an otherwise supportive set, for example) or if a reviewer is unhappy with our decision ("NSF declined something I told them was the best thing since sliced bread!"), NSF could be contacted. We would then, with the PI's permission, send each reviewer anonymous copies of all returned reviews, just like what the PI's now receive. That way, reviewers could directly compare their review with the others, and the PI would know that the offending reviewer at least knew what the others thought about the proposal, but no names would be released. The intent would be for all reviewers to be able to "calibrate" their review with others, and to see for themselves the different qualities of reviews, degrees of helpfulness etc. While this would not change the decision on the particular proposal reviewed, it would add a bit of "peer pressure" to do a professional job of constructive reviewing. What do you think of this idea? If we hear from you favorably, we'll try to get NSF management to consider it.

Bob Wintsch came on board as a rotator in September, just in time to read 100 proposals in the 15 days (!) before the Tectonics panel meeting. Then in November he took over the administration of the Active Tectonics Special Emphasis Area. As you probably know, this initiative was established in 1995 to help stimulate you in the community to submit collaborative, multidisciplinary proposals that address, however broadly, issues that relate to active tectonics. In this regard, the program (with a small "p") is being quite successful, already only in its second year. We are receiving relatively strong proposals that have an average of more than 2 PI's per project . Increasingly, proposals are being submitted that integrate components of GPS work, cosmochronology, or SAR interferometry with field structural geology, tectonic geomorphologic mapping, seismic work, or paleontology. These proposals are exciting, and help enormously to keep the Active Tectonics Initiative viable. They may also help us endure a critical assessment of the Initiative as we go along.

The biggest challenge to the Active Tectonics Initiative is the small amount of funding it receives. Its funds have come from a tax on the other Programs (with a big P), and only about $1 million is available. Given the multi-disciplinary nature and multi-year requests for support of many of the Active Tectonics proposals, $1 million does not fund very many grants, and is ten times smaller than the amount anticipated by the Active Tectonics planning committee for this stage in the program. Although the programs are not directly comparable, we do note that the Japanese program now has over $1 billion to support both domestic and international research into Japanese tectonics. We are rapidly heading to an impasse with so many strong proposals and so little funds. One possibility is that the Active Tectonics Initiative will be dissolved back into the existing formal Programs, with proposals evaluated within the formal Program structure, as was originally envisioned. The other possibility is that enough support will emanate from the community that the duration of the Initiative will be extended, and that funding will be increased more equally to meet the demand. Which of these possibilities actually occurs will depend on the number and perceived strength of the projects submitted and funded, and on how evident this value is to the powers that be. The scientific community has to take the initiative, so to speak.

T. O. Wright and R. P. Winsch, Program Directors, Tectonics Division, Earth Sciences. Fax: (703) 306-0382 and 306-0202; email: twright@nsf.gov

PI INSTITUTION PROPOSAL TITLE

Coleman Boston University COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: U-Pb Geochronology of Precambrian Gneisses in Southern California: Constraints on Proterozoic Plate Tectonics of Southwestern North America

Simpson Boston University COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: Timing of Orogenic Events in the Sierra Pampeanas of West-Central Argentina

Gromet Brown University COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: Timing of Orogenic Events in the Sierra Pampeanas of West-Central Argentina

Stock California Inst of Tech Reassessment of Geological Tie Points Across the Gulf of California

Wernicke California Inst of Tech Tectonic Processes in Upper Crustal Normal Fault Systems

Barth Indiana U Bloomington COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: U-Pb Geochronology of Precambrian Gneisses in Southern California: Constraints on Proterozoic Plate Tectonics of Southwestern North America

Hodges MIT Shortening, Gravity-Driven Compensation, and the Thermal Evolution of the East Greenland Caledonides

Umhoefer Northern Arizona Univ RUI: COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: Quaternary Deformation in the Cascade Foothill and Southern Puget Lowland, Washington

Fisher PA St U University Park Kinematics within the Retro-Wedge of an Active Arc- Continent Collision, Taiwan

Miller San Jose State Univ. Fdn RUI: COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: Structural and Petrologic Studies of the Tenpeak Pluton and Surrounding Area, North Cascades: A Window into Arc Processes in the Mid- to Lower Crust

Barnes Texas Tech University COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: Evolution of Plutonic Processes during Progressive Extension in a Metamorphic Core Complex: Mid-Crustal Granitic Rocks, Ruby Mountains, Nevada

DeCelles U of Arizona Kinematic History of a Retroarc Fold-Thrust Orogen: Sevier Orogenic Belt, Utah and Wyoming

Isachsen U of Arizona Age, Provenance and Tectonic Setting of the Proterozoic Pinal Schist Terrane, Southwestern U.S.

Roeske U of Cal Davis COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: Age, Origin and Emplacement History of the Precordillera Ophiolite, Western Argentina: Constraints on the Tectonic Significance of the Laurentia...

Bird U of Cal Los Angeles Quantitative Synthesis of Structural, Paleomagnetic, and Stress Data from North America since 85 Ma

Harrison U of Cal Los Angeles The Lateral Extent and Tectonic Significance of Late Miocene/Pliocene Inverted Metamorphism in the Himalaya

Kong U of Cal Los Angeles Dynamic Causes for Changes in the Style of Intracontinental Deformation during the Indo-Asian Collision

Yin U of Cal Los Angeles When did Extrusion of the Tibetan Plateau Initiate and How much has Occurred? Geological Investigation of the Western Kunlun Shan, W. China

Yin U of Cal Los Angeles Does the Karakorum Fault Terminate in Southwestern Tibet?

McClelland U of Cal Santa Barbara COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: Age, Origin and Emplacement History of the Precordillera Ophiolite, Western Argentina: Constraints on the Tectonic Significance of the Laurentia...

Mueller U of Florida Origin and Evolution of the Carolina Slate Belt: Implications for Neoproterozoic Geodynamics

Tikoff U of Minnesota-Twin Cities Three-Dimensional Kinematics and Mechanics of Oblique Convergence and Divergence

Wells U of Nevada Las Vegas Mesozoic Structural Evolution of the Eastern Mojave Desert Region, Iron and New York Mountains, Southeastern California

Davis U of Southern California The Yinshan Fold and Thrust Belt of Northern China -- An Enigmatic Intraplate Orogen of Jura-Cretaceous Age

Paterson U of Southern California Investigation of Arc Processes: Relationships Between Orogeny, Mountain Building, and the Role of Crustal Anisotropy in the Peninsular Ranges Batholith, Baja California

Paterson U of Southern California COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: Structural and Petrologic Studies of the Tenpeak Pluton and Surrounding Area, North Cascades: A Window into Arc Processes in the Mid- to Lower Crust

Marrett U of Texas Austin Three-Dimensional Kinematics of Fold-Thrust Belt Salients at Two Scales, Sierra Madre Oriental, Mexico

Montgomery U of Washington COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: Quaternary Deformation in the Cascade Foothills and Southern Puget Lowland, Washington

Johnson U of Wisconsin Madison Chemical and Isotopic Composition of Late Cretaceous and Early Tertiary Conglomerates, Western California: Constraints on Paleogeography

Garver Union College RUI: Systematics of Regional-Scale Erosion in the Southern Alps of New Zealand, as Revealed by Fission-Track Dating of Detrital Zircon and Apatite

van der Pluijm University of Michigan The Carthage-Colton Shear Zone, Grenville Orogen, NY

Snoke University of Wyoming COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: Evolution of Plutonic Processes during Progressive Extension in a Metamorphic Core Complex, Mid-Crustal Granitic Rocks, Ruby Mountains, Nevada

Brandon Yale University COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: Paleogene Collision and Obduction of the Far-Traveled Olyutorsky Island Arc, N. Kamchatka, Russian Far East

PI INSTITUTION PROPOSAL TITLE

Sieh California Inst of Tech COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: Studies of the Sumatran Subduction Zone

Barazangi Cornell University-Endowed The Intracontinental Middle Atlas Mountains of Morocco: Neotectonics in Response to Complex Convergent Plate Boundary

Yeats Oregon State University Deformation Rates based on Undersea Tectonic Geomorphology:

Furlong PA St U University Park Active Plate Boundary Tectonics along the San Andreas

Ward U of Cal Santa Cruz COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: Studies of the Sumatran Subduction Zone

Bock U of Cal SD Scripps Inst COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: Studies of the Sumatran Subduction Zone

Edwards U of Minnesota-Twin Cities COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: Studies of the Sumatran Subduction Zone

This evening I have the pleasure of announcing that the winner of the Structural Geology and Tectonics Division "Best Paper Award" for 1995 is "Measuring displacement gradients and strains in faulted rocks" by Steven Wojtal, which was published in the Journal of Structural Geology in 1989. Back in the depths of the 1970's and '80's, Steve was working at Dunlap, Tennessee. He had a decollement and a deformed hangingwall to investigate. The dominant agents of deformation in the hangingwall are several sets of faults. So, an issue was how to get a representation of deformation such as a strain ellipse from rocks deformed homogeneously, but discontinuously. Steve's award-winning paper addresses this issue. [Note: the remainder of the oral citation was given with a modified version of Figure 8 from the paper on the screen]

This illustration shows my only complaint about the paper, the title. There is nary a fault in the example, yet this picture shows the robustness of Steve's approach because it can be used for any set of discontinuities that are displacement loci (in this case solution surfaces). Steve considered the case of a homogeneous but discontinuous deformation where straight and parallel lines remain straight and parallel after deformation, but are offset across the structures. Using markers across the discontinuities, reciprocal displacement vectors are constructed and plotted in displacement space. These vectors allow the restoration of the rock to the undeformed state. More importantly, they are used to determine the derivatives of the reciprocal displacement gradients (slopes of lines in plots of magnitude of displacement component vs. position), which should be constant (constant line slope) for a homogeneous deformation. These derivatives are used to derive the reciprocal deformation matrix (the matrix

that describes restoring the deformed state to the undeformed state) and hence the strain ellipse (via Mohr Circle, or eigenvalues/eigenvectors). The strain ellipse or its matrix description is the conventional means of describing and assessing the distortion component of rock deformation. So, Steve managed to develop a technique for taking the results of a discontinuous deformation and converting them to a standard format of deformation analysis. For example, in Markley & Wojtal (1996) in the American Journal of Science, this approach assesses the timing and contribution of solution cleavage to fold development. So now, a worker when faced with an outcrop of faults, veins or solution cleavage (or pick your favorite discontinuous structures) can use the geometry of the structures, the displacement of markers and some common sense to determine their strain contribution. I personally feel this approach while applicable at many scales, can make its greatest contribution at the outcrop scale where strain measurement has often proven intractable in the past.

A final point, it is a pleasure to see this award going to a researcher located at an institute where undergraduate training is the focus.

Congratulations, Steve.

Thank you Bill for such a kind introduction.

It is difficult to express my feelings at learning that I had been chosen to receive this award. The first words that came to mind were not, in fact, my own but were those memorable words of Admiral Stockdale, the third party candidate for the U.S. Vice Presidency in 1992, "Who am I? Why am I here?"

Who am I? In a very real sense, I am a reflection of my teachers and collaborators, and I wish fully to acknowledge their share of the recognition this award accords. I have been lucky to have as teachers Bill Chapple, Jan Tullis, Terry Tullis, and the late David Elliott. Considering the work presented in this 1989 paper, Dave Elliott is clearly the most influential. It was in Dave's Finite Strain course that I learned the fundamental approach outlined in this paper, that deformations may be inhomogeneous when viewed at one scale and homogeneous when viewed at a larger or smaller scale, and it was Dave who suggested that I look into using hodographs (which were the basis of what I called "displacement diagrams" in the paper) to analyze faulted rocks. The imprint of his approach to structural problems is, to my eye, apparent throughout this paper, and is to a large degree the reason that this paper is successful. I have also been lucky to count among my cohorts and collaborators Steve Boyer, Nick Woodward, Rick Williams, Paul Karabinos, Fred Diegel, Jane Gilotti, Joe Hull, and Gautam Mitra. I must single out Gautam Mitra as an especially strong influence and role model. Gautam understands what it is to search for a method to measure strain in rocks lacking strain markers, and, in his work on deformed basement in Virginia, he marked the route to an answer by demonstrating the importance of mapping in detail mesoscopic structural features. Finally, I should thank two anonymous collaborators -- the two anonymous reviewers who recommended rejecting an early version of the paper. In response to their critical comments, I was able to write a revised version that was sufficiently improved to sail through the review process and, apparently, communicate effectively to some readers.

Why am I here? I believe that I am here in large measure due to the increased interest in understanding the kinematic details of discontinuously deformed rocks. Since I have the opportunity, let me say that there are other "old" papers highly worthy of reexamination in light of the new interest in the study of discontinuous deformation, such as Francois Arthaud's study of the geometry of incremental strains in faulted rocks, Gautam Mitra's paper on estimating strain in deformed basement, and Jamie Jamison's paper on fault/fracture strain.

Allow me to close by repeating that I am deeply honored by this award. I sincerely thank the committee and the Division for this honor.

Citation by Richard W. Allmendinger 

It is a great pleasure and an honor to present the Structure and Tectonics Division 1996 "Best Paper Award" to John Suppe, George Chou, and Steven Hook for their paper entitled "Rates of folding and faulting determined from growth strata" which was published in the volume entitled Thrust Tectonics edited by Ken McClay in 1992. Over the last decade and a half, John Suppe, his colleagues and students have changed the face of structural geology with numerous important contributions to our understanding of the geometry, kinematics, and mechanics of fold-and-thrust belts as well as extensional and strike-slip provinces. It is, in fact, difficult to imagine a single group with greater influence on the course of structural geology during that time interval. Many of these contributions, as with the paper we honor here tonight, have resulted from exemplary collaboration between industry and academia. Lest this citation sound more like a career contribution award, I will not take time to enumerate their many, diverse contributions, but will instead limit my remarks, albeit broadly, to the topic of the paper. Following, in part the early work of Lionel Weiss, Rodger Faill and others on kink folding, the Princeton group created a new paradigm in balanced cross-section construction. The importance of their approach can be measured by the heated debate that it still inspires more than a decade later, the extensive adoption of the techniques by industry, and as well by the commonly heard phrase "a Suppe-style cross-section". With respect to the heated debate, it should be noted that, in a footnote on the first page of their paper, Suppe, Chou, and Hook state explicitly that kink band migration is not the only important folding mechanism in the upper crust. Suppe's early papers on kink geometry were, overtly, a static geometric description of thrust belt structures, a balancing of areas in triangles, etc. He and his colleagues, however, certainly must have had a reasonably good idea of the kinematics of these structures, even as most of us were wrestling with the geometric implications for our own thrust belts. The paper which we recognize here today is a logical outgrowth of this earlier work. It is not their first publication dealing explicitly with how structures grow through time and here we acknowledge earlier work, particularly by Suppe and by his student Don Medwedeff but it is the most general and complete. If you want to understand the kinematics of structures, how the rock particles track with time through the structure, you need a tape recorder. Sediment which accumulates around and above a growing structure provides that tape recorder. As Suppe has pointed out, these "growth strata" are analogous to the magnetic stripes on the ocean floor. Rather than providing a "cookbook" for interpreting growth strata associated with specific types of thrust belt structures, Suppe, Chou, and Hook's paper begins with a general treatment of the five possible ways that the two kink axial surfaces, which define a limb of a fold, can move with respect to the rock particles and each other. Out of these five possible interactions arise some very striking growth strata geometries. On one level, a fundamental contribution of this paper is to remind us that a seemingly simple structural geometry, which we see as a snapshot in time, can have an exceedingly complex deformational history. Their work provides a framework for interpreting a variety of curious and apparently paradoxical geometries of synorogenic strata which are commonly observed in seismic data and in the field, and gives us a quantitative method for extracting meaningful rates of horizontal and vertical growth of individual structures. Beyond the specific techniques introduced in this paper, however, there is a more important aspect to this new found focus on growth strata: For the past ten or fifteen years, structural geologists and stratigraphers have been on very divergent paths as exemplified by the development of jargon nearly impenetrable to each other's discipline. The topic of growth strata has gotten numerous stratigraphers, structural geologists, and surface process geomorphologists talking, and arguing, once again. To interpret growth strata properly, one must understand not only the kinematics of the underlying structure, but also the three-dimensional geometry and episodicity of the depositional system. Nowhere is this interdisciplinary rigor more necessary than in the realm of active tectonics where one can assume neither continuous deformation nor continuous deposition over the time window of study. John Suppe, George Chou, and Steven Hook, we know that this paper is not the culmination of your work on thrust belts in general and growth strata in particular but just a step along the way. We congratulate you and look forward to your forthcoming work.

Editors' note: John Suppe writes that he and Steve Hook made informal responses to Rick's citation and didn't write anything down. John says, "We basically said that we were very grateful to Rick for his wonderful citation and to the SG&T Division. We also commented on this paper being an example of the opportunities for important cooperation in upper crustal structural geology that exist between academics and industry. Finally, we had a lot of fun doing it!"

AWARDS CEREMONY PICTURES (see hardcopy of newsletter)

Sue Treagus (University of Manchester, UK), Coordinator of the International Association of Structural/Tectonic Geologists reports that current enrollments in the Association stand at 1132. IASTG progress reports appear together with news and information on conferences in structure and tectonics around the world in the "International Newsletter" published twice-yearly in the Journal of Structural Geology. The latest news appeared in v. 19, no. 1 (January, 1997); the previous "Newsletter" was v.18, no. 7. These are also available via the IASTG homepage on the Web: http://www.man.ac.uk/Geology/IASTG.

Sue hopes to work on the next (3rd) edition of the printed IASTG membership booklet, during 1997. To avoid writing to every member for confirmation of details (which last time proved an arduous and slow business), it is hoped that members will volunteer any information on changes of address, etc.

People interested in joining the IASTG, who have not already done so, can send membership details by email to the address: iastg@man.ac.uk. Please give names, title, address, phone, fax and e-mail numbers, and a short (<20 words) description of research interests. Whatever information is provided will appear in the next printed directory to be circulated to members. With enrollment to the IASTG, new members receive an offer to subscribe to the Journal of Structural Geology at a special personal rate. Any present IASTG members who want to start a JSG subscription in this way can ask Sue for details, or contact Elsevier Science directly. Contributions to the self-sustaining IASTG effort are always welcome; contact Sue for details.

Susan H. Treagus, Dept. Earth Sciences, Manchester University, Manchester M13 9PL, U.K. Email: iastg@man.ac.uk; fac 44 161 275 3947; Website: http://www.man.ac.uk/Geology/IASTG

Editors' note: The following information was prepared by John Whalley of the University of Portsmouth, UK, list owner for the geo-tectonics@mailbase.ac.uk discussion list. His interests are broadly in the areas of thrust-related folds, basement shear zones and their mineralisation, and in the application of GIS and data integration and visualisation tools to geology in general, and tectonics in particular. The existence of the UK-based structure/tectonics discussion list was brought to our attention by Gren Draper of the Dept. of Geology at Florida International University in Miami (DRAPER@servax.fiu.edu; phone: 305 348-3087), who points out that North American participation in it seems slight. We appreciate Gren's forwarding this information to us and, through the "Newsletter", to Division members.

____________

Geoscientists with interests in any aspects of tectonics and structural geology are invited to join the geo-tectonics@mailbase.ac.uk discussion list established by the Tectonic Studies Group section of the Geological Society of London. The Group will use it to spread information about its activities, including the programmes of any meetings which they organise. The most important role for the list, though, is to promote the dissemination of information and the discussion of all aspects of tectonics, structural geology and any related disciplines. If you have a question to ask, or information to share, please, send a message to the list. The details of how to do that are given below.

The discussion list particularly welcome details of any relevant conferences, workshops, fieldtrips, etc. and would be the ideal place to inform people about your recent publications, especially any which have appeared in journals which structural geologists may not regularly read.

To join the list send a one line mail message (no subject line necessary) to: <mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk>. The text of the message should read: join geo-tectonics your-first-name your-last-name. To send a contribution to the list (anyone can), mail the text of your message to: <geo-tectonics@mailbase.ac.uk>. Please use the subject line to give information about the content of your contribution and be sure to include your email address as part of your signature; not everyone's mailer can be relied upon to preserve your address as part of the message header. If you want to reply to a message on the list you should be able to use the reply function built into your mailer. If you do, remember that your reply will be sent to everyone on the list. If you would prefer to send your reply just to the originator of the message then you will need to find out his/her email address, either from the header of their message or from the signature at the end of their message. If you believe that your contribution may generate a lot of responses it is a good idea to ask for replies to be sent directly to you and to offer to post a summary to the list.

Communicating with the Mailbase system. From time to time everyone needs to communicate with the software which controls the geo-tectonics (and lots of other) discussion lists. To do this, messages must be sent to: <mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk>. You may, for example, though I can't think why, want to remove yourself from the geo-tectonics list. To do this you would send the message: leave geo-tectonics. If you don't already possess one it's a good idea to get copy of the Mailbase user guide by sending the message: send mailbase user-guide. This gives you details of all the commands that are available to you.

The most important thing to remember is that list CONTRIBUTIONS are sent to geo-tectonics@mailbase.ac.uk and Mailbase COMMANDS are sent to mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk. A command sent to geo-tectonics@mailbase.ac.uk will be distributed to all members of the list, which is extremely annoying for them, will not have any effect on the Mailbase system, and will be very frustrating for you. Reading this sounds so simple, yet you would be amazed at the amount of list traffic which is generated by users who forget.

Many discussion lists keep a FAQ (frequently asked questions) file. At present I doubt that this list will warrant such a beast, but the possibility exists for the future. The Mailbase system can store files of information as well as mail messages and we may want to use this facility in the future. Please contact me if you think that you have information which would be suitable for distribution in this way. The Mailbase user guide contains details of how to access files associated with a particular discussion list.

What to do now? When you join this list, it would be helpful to announce your arrival.

Why not send a brief message giving name, email address, location and a sentence or two about what interests you?

John Whalley, University of Portsmouth, U.K. Email: whalleyj@sci3.sci.port.ac.uk

Have you heard what the average annual income is for a geologist these days? According to a recent AIPG-sponsored survey, as reported by China Williams in the January issue of Geotimes , it's $60,750. Only 10% make more than $100K, and the same percentage makes less than $39K. In terms of median income, geologists employed by the petroleum, mining, and mining geology consulting companies rank highest (~$71-85K). A master's degree increases mean income of geologists by about $5K from the mean for bachelor's degree holders; add another $12 K or so for the mean income of Ph.D.s with respect to master degree recipients. Highest paying areas of the country for geologists? Atlanta, Research Triangle Park, N. C., Houston, LA, San Francisco, Tampa and St. Petersburg, Fla., New Orleans, and Providence, R. I. See the Geotimes article on how to obtain copies of the full report.

Speaking of employment, the relatively few new hires we've heard about since the last "Newsletter" (and there are obviously many we've missed so keep us posted!) indicate the diversity of geoscience employment these days. Mark Groszos (Ph.D., '96; U. Florida with adviser Jim Tull) recently joined Hecla Mining Company in Coeur d"Alene, Idaho. State surveys continue to add geologists. Robert Leighty, a finishing Ph.D. student of Steve Reynolds at ASU, is studying and mapping the Phoenix Urban Fringe for the Arizona Geological Survey. Knoxville's office of the Tennessee Division of Geology has hired geologist/geophysicist Peter Lemiszki (a former Bob Hatcher Ph.D. and recently a ORNL postdoc) for geologic mapping and other duties.

Houston, Texas, continues to be a magnet for petroleum industry hires. To Amoco, go Marco Antonellini ('94 Stanford Ph.D., advisers Dave Pollard and Atilla Aydin), and Dr. Susan Agar. Susan has reversed a common trend, leaving a tenured faculty position to join Amoco's structural efforts. News from EPR includes word that John Tabor has joined its Structural Techniques group, that Cliff Ando has transferred from EPR to a supervisorial spot with Exxon Exploration (Technology/Critical Technology/ Structure core group), and that Al Tuminas has transferred from Exploration to Esso Australia, with responsibilities for the Papua New Guinea fold belt. Shell Exploration and Production's structural geology research group has hired Colorado State's Chris Hedlund, a just-completed Ph.D. advisee of Eric Erslev and John Dixon. Princeton Ph.D. Frank Bilotti ('96, a John Suppe adviser) is Houston-bound as well, joining Texaco's EPTD group. Bilotti's classmate, fellow Ph.D. and Suppe advisee, Enrique Novoa, has taken a position with Intevep Research in Caracas. Incidentally -- since Suppe's name has now been twice mentioned -- it seems appropriate to note that with John's co-receipt of the 1996 Division Best Paper Award he is the first two-time winner of this award, having received with co-authors Davis and Dahlen the 1986 award for their 1983 paper "Mechanics of fold-and-thrust belts and accretionary wedges". How 'bout that?

New responsibilities for Division members: George Thompson, Stanford U., is GSA's new president, following Eldridge Moores' just completed year in office. Given the recent presidencies of Bob Hatcher and Bill Dickinson, the Division has been the source for 4 of the last 5 GSA presidents! That's quite a run! David E. Dunn is the Society Treasurer. Carol Simpson is a soon-to-be (or is already) new co-editor for Geology. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt appointed Elizabeth Miller, Steve Reynolds, and Bob Hatcher to membership on the National Cooperative Geologic Mapping Advisory Committee (or the NCGMAC if that's easier to remember). The appointments to the 12 person committee were made last April, but word didn't filter through to LA in time for last September's "Newsletter". Bob Wintsch has joined Tom Wright as a Co-Program Director for NSF's Tectonics Program. Congratulations to both Jan Tullis and Walter Mooney, our two Division members among the 32 earth scientists elected last year to AGU Fellowship status; mention of Walter's election was omitted in the last "Newsletter". On a sad note, Curt Teichert, a distinguished geologist, an emeritus Professor at the University of Kansas, and a member of our Division for many years, passed away last May 10th.

News from up north: "The Main Thrust", the newsletter of our counterpart division in the Geological Association of Canada, reports that their division's latest Best Paper award for a paper by Canadian authors or dealing with Canadian structural geology and tectonics goes to John Spray for his 1995 Geology paper "Pseudotachylyte controversy: fact or friction" (v. 23, p. 1119-23). The winner of the division's 1996 Best Thesis award goes to Pinglao Zhao of the University de Montreal. Zhao's thesis "Rheology of polyphase rocks and its tectonic significance" was supervised by S. Ji. The 1997 Canadian Tectonics Group meeting will be hosted by Nick Culshaw from Dalhousie University and will be held in the Halifax area of Nova Scotia. For information regarding the GAC SG&T Division contact either current Chairperson Alexander Cruden (cruden@credit.erin.utoronto.ca) or Frank Fueten, Secretary (ffueten@craton.geol.brocku.ca). Current and back issues of the "Main Thrust" are available at the Canadian Tectonics Group/SGTD website: http://craton.geol.brocku.ca/ctg.html. Incidentally, in light of declining GSA membership, it's perhaps noteworthy that the GAC is seeing a similar trend. Membership in 1996 was 2079, down from 2223 the year before.

While our Division of structural geology and tectonics does not give an annual "best thesis" award to a graduate student, we do review all funded GSA student research grant proposals in the areas of structure and tectonics . From that group, a commitee selects two of the funded proposals for financial support from the Division, including travel expenses to the upcoming GSA Annual Meeting. This year, our Division support was awarded to Mark A. Hemphill-Haley of the University of Oregon ("Investigation of geometry, mode of displacement and activity of faults within the Cascadia back-arc region of central Oregon") and to Olivier Vanderhaeghe of the University of Minnesota ("The role of partial melting during late-orogenic collapse: The Shuswap metamorphic core complex, British Columbia, Canada").

The advisers to Mark and Olivier, respectively, are Ray Weldon, Gene Humphreys, and Katharine Cashman, all of Oregon, and Christian Teyssier.

G.D.

Eldridge Moores and Rob Twiss recently completed a tectonics text that compliments their excellent structural geology book. This began as a single book for the structure-tectonics course sequence at UC-Davis, but the result was sufficiently massive that they divided it in two, with sufficient overlap to allow each book to stand alone. Tectonics shares many characteristics with its companion volume: readable prose; clear, informative, and abundant illustrations; and organization that mainly works from observation to interpretation. The book is written at a level suitable for undergraduate majors in geology; graduate students and professionals seeking an overview of modern tectonics may find it insufficiently rigorous, and reference citations inadequate, for their needs.

Tectonics is organized into four sections. Part I comprises two background chapters, the first an overview of tectonics and the second a brief summary of geophysical methods. I found the geophysics chapter too brief and qualitative to be wholly satisfying, but it certainly will be useful to students who have no previous background in geophysics.

Chapters 3 through 9 make up "Part II Plate Tectonics," which covers the principal tectonic features of the Earth; the kinematics of plate motion on a sphere; divergent plate margins and rifts; transform plate margins; convergent plate margins; triple junctions; and collisions. I regard this as the best part of the book; its strengths are comprehensiveness and balance. Indeed, this is the first book I have encountered that is sufficiently complete in covering plate boundaries and tectonic processes on both continents and in the oceans to serve satisfactorily as a text for my own tectonics course.

However, the breadth and balance seemingly come at a price. Many instructors will find the coverage of their favorite topics shallower than they wish and, although any text is inevitably out of date by the time it appears, in some places Tectonics is more dated than I might have hoped. For instance, the debate about the tectonic style of continental extension is presented as the matter stood about twelve years ago at the peak of the "pure shear vs. simple shear" controversy. By even ten years ago, cumulative field evidence for large-magnitude extensional shear across "detachment faults" had become so compelling that most researchers had shifted from debating its existence to trying to explain it in a physically feasible way. This led to many ideas not mentioned in the book, such as rolling-hinge models now nearly 9 years old and various attempts (most implausible, unfortunately) to explain frictional slip across low-angle normal faults by inducing curved crustal stress trajectories. I was disappointed by such an out-of-date treatment of such a prominent issue, although my perspective on this issue is rather myopic.

Between Parts II and III is a 12-page "Interlude" that reviews the historical and philosophical underpinnings of plate tectonics. This ground has been tread many times before, but rarely in a textbook at this level, and the personal slant of the authors makes it interesting reading. I found much with which I agree, e.g., the central importance of a historical perspective in geological thought. However, I disagree strongly with two key points that I can't let pass.

The authors make a point of the role of models in Earth science. Personally, I think that Earth scientists ought to use the word "model" the way other scientists do and that, because many habitually do not, a lot of muddy thinking results. In most sciences, a model is an a priori construct that predicts the behavior of a generic system. These two specific aspects of a model that it is designed to apply generically to a set of similar phenomena, and it is predictive rather than descriptive are what give a model fundamental conceptual significance and permit it to be tested by observation. Unfortunately, most earth scientists (including these authors) refer to a synoptic conceptual description of the tectonic evolution of a region as a model, which it is not: it is site-specific rather then generic and descriptive rather than predictive. Such "models" provide little fundamental conceptual insight, and cannot truly be tested. In Chapter 10, the authors seek to construct a sort of generic "model" mountain belt, which seems to be largely a catalog of tectonic features that have been observed in more than one mountain belt. This "model" may be generic, but it still is purely descriptive and therefore is untestable. Later on, the authors compare specific mountain belts to the "predictions" of this "model," an exercise that I regard as dubious at best;. All that is thus "tested" is the descriptive uniformity of a group of mountain belts, which seems to me unlikely to yield any deeper understanding of tectonic phenomena.

My other point of disagreement is the authors' characterization of current tectonics research as a "mop up" operation (p. 258). Plate tectonics may indeed provide an adequate descriptive framework for major tectonic phenomena on Earth (although I regard even this conclusion as, at best, disturbingly complacent). However, plate tectonics is only a kinematic theory. It exists independently of the mechanical knowledge of its workings. In fact, present mechanical understanding of plate tectonics is primitive. We have only a sketchy knowledge of stresses within plates, and know less about the stresses at their boundaries. Our knowledge is yet more vague about what engenders such stresses (which cause plates to move), or how these stresses vary in time. We have yet to predict an earthquake and do not really know why some faults are seismogenic and others are not does anyone seriously believe that we understand faults, the principal surface-geologic expression of plate boundaries? And I could go on like this for pages. To draw an anology with the history of quantum mechanics, current plate tectonic theory seems to me as much like the early Bohr quantum theory as the mature quantum theory of Heisenberg, Dirac, et al. and the Bohr atom was the prologue of the real revolution, not its conclusion.

The book concludes with four chapters, grouped in "Part III Tectonic History," but which seem more to be organizational odds and ends. The "model" orogenic belt mentioned above is introduced in Chapter 10, along with several brief treatments of a rather miscellaneous set of structural topics. Because I prefer to integrate discussion of the tectonic elements described in Chapter 10 (e.g., foreland basins and thrust belts, crystalline core zones, high-angle fault zones) with suitable points in the material covered in Chapters 3 through 9, I find the placement of this material awkward.

Chapter 11 is a brief review of neotectonic methods, and I also am puzzled by its placement. The treatment resembles that of geophysics in Chapter 2, i.e., a brief overview of methods and results, well short of a providing a working knowledge of anything. Neotectonics, like geophysics, is a major avenue of active research with broad and fruitful applications to tectonic problems. I find it odd that the authors chose to put geophysics in Part I, but neotectonics in Part III, such that the latter material could not be readily used in addressing topics in Chapters 3 through 9.

Chapter 12 is a set of brief case studies of mountain belts. All are very short and sketchy, but the length and level of detail nonetheless is uneven and does not seem to reflect either what or how much actually is known about each mountain belt. As with Chapter 10, I would have found it more natural to integrate this material with appropriate sections of Chapters 3 through 9, particularly because no case study is treated fully enough to be particularly satisfying on its own. Chapter 13 is a very brief review of tectonics of other terrestrial planets (10 pages for 4 planets). My own knowledge of this area is limited indeed, but I found the treatment so brief and superficial as make its inclusion of dubious value. Both Chapters 12 and 13, if retained in a future edition, would be strengthened by using fewer examples and presenting them more thoroughly.

The greatest strength of the book thus is in the middle chapters, which I regard as the most balanced treatment of regional tectonics in a plate tectonic framework that I have encountered in an undergraduate textbook. Although there is much in the rest of the book that I find disappointing, I regard this strength as sufficiently valuable that I am quite likely to use it in my own tectonics class.

John Bartley, Department of Geology and Geophysics, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84112. Email: jbartley@bingham.mines.utah.edu .

An Yin and Mark Harrison, both of UCLA, have collected twenty-one contributions on the tectonic evolution of Asia that arose from a Rubey Colloquium at the University of California, Los Angeles, on February 25-27, 1994. The book is divided into five parts: geodynamic models of the Cenozoic deformation in Asia; seismotectonics; geologic evolution of the Himalaya-Karakorum ranges; tectonics of the Cenozoic Indo-Asia collision; and Mesozoic-Cenozoic assembly of Asia.

Asia is the youngest continent and contains the largest landmass. The evolution of Asia has occurred over the past 500 million years and continues today. There is consensus gradually emerging on the timing of collision of India with Asia, although there is still conflicting opinion regarding the nature of the collisional processes. The Paleozoic history of Asia is addressed at length by Sengor and Natalin whose Altaid model still needs to be tested. The Mesozoic history of Asia is addressed in several papers. These include: paleobiology and paleoenvironments that tie South China, Tibet and Indochina together during Permo-Triassic extensions (Ziegler et al.); evolution of Songpan Ghanzi (Zhou and Graham); the nature of ultra-high-pressure metamorphism in east-central Asia (Liou et al. and Hacker et al.); and detailed structural analyses of a northern Beijing metamorphic complex (Davis et al.) and areas in Korea (Otoh and Yanai) and Turkey (Okay et al).

The Indian-Asian collision is covered in the Himalayas-Karakorum chapter. Le Fort describes the evolution of the Himalayas, including metamorphic and igneous events that tie to thrust events. Chamberlain and Zeitler discuss metamorphic evolution as related to thrust timing. There is consensus between the papers on the timing of collision being 55-54 Ma in the west and 42 Ma in the east. Several important problems are addressed related to the collision. These include: timing and evolutionary patterns of intracontinental deformation over the past 50 Ma, accommodation mechanisms of the Indo-Asian collision using geodynamic models (Housemann and England; Kory and Bird); collision seismotectonics (Chen and Kao); and the results of specific field-related investigations (Thomas et al. in Tazdhik Basin, Harrison et al. in Ailao Shan-Red River shear zone, and Ratschbacher in Tibet and Sichuan areas).

The timing of uplift and exhumation processes is addressed by Searle and its sedimentary response by Burbank, Beck and Mulder. Finally, Yin and Nie propose a regional tectonic model for eastern Asia utilizing a series of palinspastic restorations for the Phanerozoic. The introduction to the book addresses the contents as "an authoritative description of our current understanding of Asian tectonics and continental growth for graduate students and researchers". The book is that and more: for those of us who were participants in the Colloquium, it is a documentation of the invigorating debates involving differences of emphasis and consensus on each of the outstanding problems of the tectonics of Asia, as well as reports of new scientific findings. The editors are to be congratulated on putting this volume together in a timely manner.

Pinar O. Yilmaz, Exxon Exploration Company, Houston. 
Email: Pinar.O.Yilmaz@EXXON.sprint.com 

The Structural Geology and Tectonics Division Short Course Committee wants to hear Division members' suggestions for short courses at upcoming Annual Meetings. The committee is especially interested in suggestions for topics and/or instructors. Perhaps YOU are interested in organizing and instructing a short course. Volunteer(!), or send suggestions to: Wanda J. Taylor, Dept. of Geoscience, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 4505 Maryland Parkway, Las Vegas, NV 89154-4010, or contact by email: wjt@nevada.edu.

NSF-Sponsored Short Course for College Teachers: "Earthquakes" by Thomas Heaton, Cal Tech, June 19-21.

The 1997 National Chautauqua Short Course Program, sponsored by NSF for college teachers, has announced that Thomas Heaton of Cal Tech, a world-renowned seismologist, will teach a short course for approximately 25 participants that focuses on earthquake phenomena. College teachers of geology, geophysics, physics, engineering and physical science are invited to apply. The course will be divided into four parts. It begins with a discussion of the design and capabilities of different seismographic systems and the types of earthquake waves seen in seismograms. The second part describes earthquake phenomenology (e.g. where?, when?, how large? nature of foreshocks and aftershocks). Part three focuses on the problems of potentially damaging ground motions and aspects of earthquake engineering design. The final part of the course will discuss the basic physics of earthquake ruptures, the nature of seismic slip, stress and strength of the earth, and earthquake prediction.

There is no registration fee for the course, but a $40 application fee is requested (if the applicant is not appointed to the course, the fee will be refunded). Participants or their institutions are expected to cover the cost of lodging, meals, and travel; the course will be held at Cal Tech in Pasadena. Applications should be made as early as possible. For more information or to request an application form for Course 27 contact: Francis Collea, California Academy of Mathematics and Science, Cal State Univ., Dominquez Hills, Carson, CA 90747. Tel.: (310) 243-3755; fax: (310) 516-4484; email: fcollea@dhvx20.csudh.edu. To check space availability in the course (#27) contact: http://www.engrng.pitt.edu/~chautauq/

Joint Annual Meeting -- GAC and MAC, Ottawa, Canada, May 19-21

The Geological Association of Canada will celebrate its 50th Anniversary at the time of the combined GAC/MAC meeting this Spring in Ottawa. A number of symposia and special sessions have been planned that will be of interest to some Division members. Special anniversary talks will be given by John Clague, "Geologic evidence for great earthquakes at the Cascadia subduction zone", and John Dewey, "Strain, displacement and rotation in plate boundary zones." Symposia of structure and tectonics interest include "Extraction, transport, and emplacement of granitic magmas: physical processes and structural signatures" and "New developments in paleocontinental reconstruction." Special sessions include "Tectonic, magmatic and hydrothermal evolution of continental backarc rifts and methods of sulfide exploration ...", "Tectono-metamorphic history of the Canadian Shield", and "The Grenville orogen: From mountains to skyscrapers." For meeting information contact: Charles Smith, Chair, Ottawa '97 (phone: 613-773-3980; email: csmith@NRCan.gc.ca), or Gina LeCheminant, Vice-Chair (phone:613-995-4686; email:lecheminant@gsc.NRCan.gc.ca). The deadline for abstract submission to the meeting has passed.

Belt Association Research Grants for Students

Applications are invited for funds for geologic research by senior undergraduate students and graduate students conducting research on the Belt Supergroup. Grants are awarded on a competitive basis and usually range between $200-$1000. Policies, forms for grant applications, and the application deadline (usually in April) can be obtained by writing to the Belt Association, P. O. Box 1816, Spokane, Washington 99210.

Graduate Student Research Grants, Colorado Scientific Society

The Colorado Scientific Society announces the availability of research grants for M.S and Ph.D. earth science students involved in field-oriented studies in Colorado and the Rocky Mountain region or who undertake topical or field research in engineering geology. Approximately eight grants will be awarded in the $500-$1000 range, and one grant is available for an engineering geology thesis or dissertation with no geographic specifivity. Policies, procedures for grant applications and awards, and the application deadline (usually in April) can be obtained from: The Chairman, Memorial Research Funds, Colorado Scientific Society, P. O. Box. 150495, Lakewood, CO 80215-0495.

In last spring's SG&T "Newsletter" I contributed a note asking for input on an initiative to revitalize field geology through high tech applications. About 20 people responded to my note and we had an e-mail discussion for a couple of months on this subject. We met formally for the first time at the GSA Annual Meeting in Denver on Sunday, Oct. 27, 1996. Approximately 25 people attended the meeting. Full minutes of this meeting are available if you submit a request to me via e-mail (tpavlis@geology.uno.edu), but the following is an abstract of those minutes.

The discussions of the group began with various viewpoints on the good and bad points of GIS systems, but quickly extended to other discussions of exactly what was really needed for field geology. One important divergence was a simple question of goals for this initiative when Rick Allmendinger raised the question of "Are we doing something with an aim of developing new science or something that would simply make it easier to collect data for doing the science we do now?" We did not reach a consensus on this issue, but there was a general opinion that this issue was partially one of long term vs short term goals -- long term goals are toward new science, but short term goals are clearly aimed at better and more efficient data collection.

The discussion changed when Boyan Brodaric described how the Geological Survey of Canada had been dealing with the issue of computer based mapping for their field parties. They had begun with a philosophy of developing of a pre-processor (front-end) for GIS systems to insulate the geologist from dealing with all the ins and outs of GIS. The working version now uses a combination of a data logger system (based on Apple Newtons) and a laptop computer for compilation. Boyan noted that a key thing that they began with was dealing with the question of a model for the field mapping process. That is, what is done routinely by all geologists in the field vs. "custom" things that are unique to individuals. He also noted the need for a "common abstraction" of how the data are assembled for subsequent analysis -- so that the data could be passed on to GIS systems in some logical fashion. Some of us had a chance to look at the GSC system at the software fair (and some of you out there undoubtedly have experience with it) and it is a very sophisticated system with a great price tag (it can be downloaded from the Internet -- although you'll need some commercial software to work with it).

We also discussed some other topics in addition to using computer applications. For example, although there were defenders of the Brunton compass, some of us really like the idea of developing some better field tools (like a recording compass). Three common needs were summarized: 1) routine availability of high-quality topographic data; 2) availability of high-quality digital imagery; 3) ability to drape 2 on 1; and 4) better transportation. The last item is clearly a serious one that may not be addressed in this initiative -- we are a long way from 19th century transportation problems but we probably are not quite at the geologic jet pack stage either.

Finally, by the end of the meeting it was clear that there are a great variety of software and hardware solutions in existance or in development, but it is equally clear that no individual (at least those at the meeting) has a clear picture of the good and bad points of all the solutions. Thus, we generally agreed as a group that any type of workshop that we might organize would have to have some kind of hands-on approach; essentially some kind of combination of instruction followed by discussions and planning. Accordingly, our plan is to organize a workshop that will be partially educational and partially developmental, and hopefully funded under that shared goal.

During early 1997, Bill Dunne, Laura Serpa, and I (plus anyone else who wants to help) will be putting together a proposal (or proposals) to get this thing going, so any input you might have would be greatly appreciated! If you want to be included in this group and haven't already contacted me, please send me an e-mail note to address below.

Terry L. Pavlis
Department of Geology and Geophysics, University of New Orleans, New Orleans, LA 70148 
E-mail: tpavlis@geology.uno.edu

Editors' note: In keeping with Terry's article above, attention is directed towards a short course to be offered at the May GAC/MAC Annual Meeting (see "Announcements) entitled "From outcrop to output: field-oriented GIS for geoscientists". Instructed by B. Brodaric and D. Wright (both GAC) and R. Harrap (Queen's), this 3-day course (5/16-18) "will be an overview to field-use oriented, affordable, desktop mapping technologies, GIS and cartographic techniques, field data capture methods, including on-outcrop devices such as PDA and GPS, and data transfer techniques used to move the data to the desktop." For more information contact: Jean Dougherty, GSC; email: <jdougherty@gsc.NRCan.gc.ca>.

A GSA Penrose Conference concerning the "Tectonics of Continental Interiors" will be held September 23-28, 1997, at Brian Head Resort near Cedar City, Utah. This picturesque conference location lies at the boundary between the Basin and Range rift and the Colorado Plateau, at the gateway to the beautiful redrock canyons of Utah.

During the past quarter century, much of the research effort in tectonics has focused on understanding the nature of geologic activity in the Phanerozoic and Precambrian orogens that formed along former continental margins. In contrast, there has been relatively little work concerning the nature of tectonism in continental interiors. Many of these regions have been dismissed as being "stable," and of little concern to tectonicists. In fact, continental interiors are not tectonically inactive, they simply behave differently from marginal orogens. We hope that by bringing together a diversity of people who have worked on a variety of aspects of continental-interior geology, participants will be able to develop a comprehensive image of what is now known about continental-interiors, and can see interrelationships among different geologic features. The conference will provide a forum for a multidisciplinary discussion of tectonic features in cratonic areas, midcontinent platform regions, interior basins, "Laramide-style" deformation provinces, and "continental-interior orogens." Participants will gain a new understanding of how continental interiors have responded to plate interactions and to mantle dynamics through time.

Possible topics that the meeting will address include: the origin and "stabilization" of continental-interior regions, the nature of continental-interior lithosphere and asthenosphere, the nature of deformation in continental-interiors, controls and causes of continental-interior orogeny, concepts of epeirogeny and intracratonic-basin formation, reactivation of basement structures, and neotectonics and seismicity of continental interiors

The meeting will be limited to 80 participants, and will be organized to provide the maximum opportunity for discussion, especially with the goal of understanding the linkages among various themes. George Davis (Univ. of Arizona) will organize a premeeting trip from Las Vegas to Cedar Breaks as well as a mid-meeting trip in the Bryce Canyon region.

Keynote addresses during the meeting will include contributions by: Larry Brown (Cornell Univ.); Sierd Cloetingh (Inst. of Earth Studies, Netherlands); Michael Gurnis (Caltech); Kurt Lambeck (Australian National Univ.); Leigh Royden (MIT); Celal Sengör (Istanbul Teknik Üniv.); and Mary Lou Zoback (U.S.G.S.).

Conveners:Stephen Marshak, Department of Geology, University of Illinois Urbana, IL 61801. Email: smarshak@uiuc.edu; fax: 217-244-4996; phone: 217-333-7705.

Michael Hamburger, Dept. of Geological Sciences Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405. Email: hamburg@indiana.edu; fax: 812-855-7899; phone: 812-855-2934.

Ben van der Pluijm, Dept. of Geological Sciences, University of Michigan, MI 48109-1063. Email: vdpluijm@umich.edu; fax: 313-763-4690; phone: 313-764-8545.

Applications: Michael Hamburger is handling applications for the meeting. To apply, please send or email Mike a letter indicating your interest, your background, and the subject that you wish to discuss at the meeting. The official application deadline for this meeting is February 15, 1997, but we will consider applications until March 15 if space is available. We anticipate that the registration cost (which includes lodging, the field trips, and some meals) for the meeting will not exceed $700 and may be substantially less; graduate students can receive partial support toward the registration fee.

Website: For additional information and updates, go to our website: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~vdpluijm/penrose.htm

How can the GSA Annual Meeting be improved? Is the present balance between science, education and outreach about right or does it need to be modified? What changes would you like to see in the technical program or in meeting scheduling, timing and location? GSA has just established a new committee to provide long range planing for the GSA Annual Meetings. This committee's initial charge is to develop a plan for increasing the quality of the Annual Meeting in terms of science, education, and outreach and a long-term logistical plan for the technical program. After the initial long-range strategy is developed (and approved by Council), the Annual Program committee is charged with both short- and long-term planning for the Annual Meetings and with evaluating each year's technical and scientific program to discover what modifications are needed to accomplish the Society's long-range goals. I am currently the Chair of the committee and am interested in your opinions -- both what you like and dislike about the Annual Meeting -- and any suggestions you have for improvement. Please send me your ideas.

Sharon Mosher, Department of Geological Sciences, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712. Email: mosher@mail.utexas.edu.

Whenever I open a U.S.G.S. folio, I marvel at the detail in the topographic base maps that, in many cases, were made by the person who also was responsible for mapping the geology. Most of these maps were made before air photos became the starting point for construction of topographic base maps, and were clearly not as accurate. Air photo-derived topographic maps, with appropriate ground control and field checking, represented a major technological advance in map accuracy. Technological advance has in every science resulted in increased accuracy and precision of data bases, better quality control and precision in manufacturing, and yielded a number of products that permit scientists to push back the frontiers of knowledge more rapidly and farther than ever before. In geological science there are numerous examples any of us could cite -- the most obvious of which is the computer, which has revolutionized the way I have written this article and by which I can produce very complex yet high quality graphics. Digital technology has impacted all of us, and will continue to throughout both our personal and professional lives. For the field geologist, Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) receivers are in common use for more precise location, and as a crutch for those who never learned to navigate with a compass and a topo map. Many of us are already making use of graphic information systems (GIS) technology to compile and display geologic field data, and someday soon paper copies of maps will be printouts of GIS-rendered data, rather then the other way around. We have already produced one such geologic map at our place and all of my graduate students are learning that technology.

There is a problem, however, with our topographic base maps and the new technologies. Last year, we pointed out a problem with revised and newly contoured predigital topographic maps; for example, compare in the September, 1996, issue of this "Newsletter", the 1966 edition of the Macedonia quadrangle, North Carolina-Georgia, with the 1988 edition. The older (1966) map contours reveal greater detail and are, therefore, more accurate than the recontoured and totally revised (1988) versions of the same 7 1/2-minute quadrangle. The contours of the newer map have been smoothed and the resolution is thereby markedly decreased.

Have you had an opportunity to use one of the new metric maps in the field yet? The contour interval may, but not in every case, produce less resolution. The main problem, however, is the ground truth: critical points for good location, such as stream junctions, are frequently mislocated in parts of the U.S. where vegetation obscures photography and field checking has not been done to the degree it was a few decades ago. The technological improvement is there, but the lack of field checking nullifies the technological advance in computer-assisted map production.

The most recent problem encountered is with contours drawn by computer algorithms that are incapable of dealing with locally low relief and produce spider web-like lines rather than contours. Unfortunately, several of these have been published (see figures). These kinds of problems will be solved soon, but the decline of map accuracy, doubtlessly a financial tradeoff, is something that is unacceptable to field geologists, engineers, and any others who need to know exactly (within the limits of the map) where they are away from roads and other easily identified cultural features. My purpose here is to express concern about this continued erosion of map accuracy standards at a time when enormous advances are being made in graphics technologies and the assistance they are able to provide for the complex tasks associated with map production. The technological advances should be helping geological scientists as they are other scientists and engineers, but they are not. I have talked recently to people in the private sector who make topographic maps; using present-day technology, they can readily make large-scale maps with enough detail to resolve and contour the arch and slopes away from the center of a highway

As a strong advocate of maintaining and building on the traditional roles of the U.S. Geological Survey, and a strong supporter of both the traditional and "new" U.S.G.S. missions, I regard the decrease in map quality as a step backwards. The national topographic mapping program is an element that could not be readily carried out by a single private enterprise across the country, nor could uniform standards be maintained by several smaller entities, as has been suggested by one or more members of Congress. I believe that, as users of these maps, field geologists should advocate maintenance of map standards and that the USGS should be provided the resources to maintain them. Technological advances should help, not hinder, the work of all users of such an essential tool as topographic base maps.

Bob Hatcher, Department of Geological Sciences, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996-1410. Phone: (615) 974-2366; fax: (615) 974-2368; email: bobmap@utk.edu

Twice a year we read in this "Newsletter" a report from the Director of the Tectonics Program, Tom Wright, about the state of the Program and the awards that have been made. This is a commendable way for a public official to inform the community about the federally-funded research in which it has a vested interest. Based on this information we have formed some opinions about the Program, as probably most of you have and, in the spirit of making this a two-way communication, we have written this short piece. We hope that you will share your opinions if you feel strongly about them. Because the NSF granting system is peer reviewed, one could argue that the community itself selects the best proposals for funding. However, given that the reviewers and the panel members are selected by the Program Director, who also renders his decision on the final rankings, the system is open to significant guidance. Furthermore, as a federal institution, the NSF has a mandate from Congress and a set of defined objectives. The mission statements of the Earth Sciences Division (EAR) and of the Tectonics Program, as published on the NSF WWW home page, are as follows:

"EAR supports basic research in all areas of geology, geophysics, geochemistry, paleobiology, and hydrology ... . The knowledge resulting from this research will lead to a better understanding of the earth's changing environments and the natural distribution of water, mineral, and energy resources, and will provide methods for predicting and mitigating the effects of geologic hazards such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and major landslides."

"The Tectonics Program involves studies in structural geology, tectonics, geochronology, petrology, paleomagnetics, and other fields related to understanding the tectonic history of the lithosphere through time. Supported research includes field, laboratory, and theoretical studies of the processes and kinematics accompanying deformation at plate boundaries and in plate interiors."

Everyone can evaluate how consistent the content of the program is with these goals, and we offer our opinion as participants in the structural geology and tectonics community for the past twenty-five years. We have submitted proposals to, and managed grants from, the NSF since 1969, and we believe the Tectonics Program (and its predecessor the Crustal Structure and Tectonics Program) is our principal funding base within the EAR. First we focus on the question: how does the composition of the Tectonics Program reflect the methods of inquiry identified in the mission statement? We use the number of awards for the period July 1994 to July 1996 to estimate the following distribution:

Of course others are likely to classify the awards somewhat differently, but we suggest that a skewness favoring field and regional studies would remain. We believe that understanding the mechanisms and processes of crustal deformation depends upon integration of field observations with the quantitative and deductive results from experimentation and theoretical studies. Thus we are concerned about the apparent lack of support for such integration in the program. In his Presidential Address to the Geological Society of America (GSA Today, 1993) E-an Zen describes the balance we are advocating:

"Laboratory [and theoretical] studies are usually so designed that the initial and boundary conditions, as well as the variables, are carefully controlled, so that one could gain detailed understanding of idealized systems. Earth science must practice this kind of discipline, but it also must deal with the real world. This real world is not simple and neat. It is nonlinear, it is contingent, it is time-dependent, and it usually consists of a complex and messy overlay of events. Thus, when we apply to Earth precise understandings gained from simplified systems, we have to extrapolate to situations where we cannot run away from nature's untidiness. The two approaches are as woof and warp in weaving: neither can serve alone. ..."

In our opinion the Tectonics Program is neglecting the "woof" and thus is not providing a complete "carpet" to support research. A consequence of this imbalance is a lack of support for training students along lines consistent with the needs of the current job market. In a recent advertisement we read that a major university will give preference "to those with interests in experimental and/or theoretical approaches to solve problems in structural geology. Numerical modeling is considered an essential tool." A major oil company has advertised for two structural geologists having "quantitative orientations with strong computer skills." Two other companies have advertised for structural geologists with similar quantitative and modeling skills. Given that one of the missions of the NSF is training young scientists, it appears that the Tectonics Program has not been responsive to the current qualifications being sought by employers, judging by the numbers given above. Ironically, the Program dropped the identifier "structure" from its title while the demand for quantitative structural geologists is expanding. There is a second issue that has created a lot of confusion in our minds: what is the role of societal relevance in the evaluation of federally-funded research? Both Congress and leaders at the NSF have announced that the nation's support for science depends upon paying closer attention to the needs of society. The Senate Appropriations Subcommittee that handles NSF's budget recently challenged the agency to: "emphasize support for research and education in strategically important areas; [and] strengthen its partnership with industry, state and local governments and other Federal agencies" ... (Physics Today, 1994). A target has been suggested of 60% "strategic" research in which applications to societal problems are anticipated and 40% "curiosity-driven" research with little or no reference to potential applications and societal benefits. The mission statement for EAR acknowledges these political currents by specifically focusing on natural resources and geological hazards. However, here is our tally for the Tectonics Program awards:

Our principal objective is not to debate the definitions of these categories, nor the merits and justifications for the apparent imbalance, since similar issues have been discussed in many professional publications recently. Rather we wish to clarify the rules under which our proposals are being evaluated. Should we feel encouraged to emphasize the strategic aspects of a proposal, or will this doom the chances for funding? This is not just a personal concern, because we have heard from colleagues how their emphasis on strategic importance has led to unfavorable treatment. The structural and tectonics community has the opportunity to make significant contributions to the solution of problems relevant to society. The new Active Tectonics Initiative is a good example and may impact the comparison made above. There are many other structural and tectonic topics which are relevant to society. For example, this past September we attended a meeting at Leeds University on Faulting, Fault Sealing and Fluid Flow in Hydrocarbon Reservoirs where 250 scientists and engineers from academia and industry packed the hall to discuss this timely and challenging area of research. Next September a Penrose Conference will be held on "Faults and Subsurface Fluid Flow: Fundamentals and Applications to Hydrogeology and Petroleum Geology." It is open to discussion whether the Tectonics Program should be more receptive to proposals on these topics. In conclusion, we have expressed our concerns on two trends in the track record of the Tectonics Program: one is about the apparent lack of support for process-oriented, experimental and theoretical research; the second is about the perceived uncertain or negative role of societal relevance in the evaluation of proposals. We hope that our comments will promote an open and frank discussion of these issues. If you do not want to make a public statement via this "Newsletter", but want to share your experiences and opinions with us, please send email to the addresses given below.

David D. Pollard and Atilla Aydin, Department of Geological and Environmental Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305 (dpollard@pangea.stanford.edu and aydin@pangea.stanford.edu)

Dave Pollard and Atilla Aydin raise some important issues about "program balance". They have expressed concerns at trends they see in the awards made by the Tectonics program, and wish to clarify the rules under which proposals are being evaluated. We're delighted! First, because response and feed-back from the community are really valuable, but have been a bit sparse from our previous "NSF News" efforts. Second, because of their focus on wanting to learn more about the rules and how they are made and applied.

Our article in this issue and the next couple of issues are aimed at laying out these rules and practices as far as the Tectonics program is concerned. We strongly encourage everyone having concerns to respond publically (read "effectively") rather than grumble to yourselves (read "invisibly"). With our low funding rates, we do not suffer from the illusion that we're pleasing everyone! But, we would like to raise the sights a bit to include consideration of how "balance" is addressed at sucessively higher levels,both within NSF's structure and even broader arenas. The rules change from level to level, and arguments effective at one level are inappropriate or, at least ineffective, at others.

Over the next couple of "NSF News" articles we will attempt to clarify our part of the system. It would be great if those of you who have insights into other parts of the overall system would follow Dave and Atilla's lead and express your views and observations in the "Newsletter". Between us we can try to dispell misconceptions and direct our efforts effectively.

Tom Wright and Bob Wintsch, Program Directors, Tectonics Division, Earth Sciences. Fax: (703) 306-0382 and (703) 306-0202; email: twright@nsf.gov 

Editors' note: We thank Dave, Atilla, Tom, and Bob for their positive and constructive exchange of views regarding goals of the Tectonics program and the allocation of program monies toward various fields of tectonics and structural geology research. Hopefully, with the encouragement of these four individuals, other Division members will use the "Newsletter" as a forum for enlarging the exchange of ideas begun in the opinions and positions expressed above. The views of former Tectonics (and Structure and Tectonics) panelists and members of NSF Earth Sciences advisory and oversight committees could be especially valuable, since these members of our community have special insights into the efficacy and fairness of the proposal review and grant awarding process.

This site of this year's GSA Annual Meeting, located in the shadow of the Rocky Mountain Front, was an ideal setting for a symposium on the tectonics of an unusual class of mountain belts -- those that form deep within continental interiors. The GSA Symposium, entitled, "Active Tectonics of Intracontinental Mountain Belts with Implications for Ancient Sys