Suzanne Mahlburg Kay

Dept. of EAS, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853, USA

2013 GSA Presidential Address

Delivered at the GSA Annual Meeting in Denver, Colorado, USA, on Sunday, 27 October 2013.

ABSTRACT

In the 125th year of The Geological Society of America, it is appropriate to look at the past accomplishments and the future of the Society. With this comes the understanding that it is through curiosity-driven geoscience, whose promotion and communication are hallmarks of GSA, that strides are made in understanding resources, hazards, the global environment, and the factors that influence our survival on planet Earth. Over the years, these advances have come from deductive reasoning based on new and accumulated field and laboratory observations and theoretical modeling, which are continuously taken to new levels by incorporating the latest scientific technology. With this in mind, we examine advances in understanding the origin of mountain belts in the context of the formation and evolution of Earth as our governing concepts have evolved from geosynclinal theory to plate interactions and continental collisions to concepts of continental lithospheric growth and destruction by processes like lower crustal and lithospheric delamination and forearc subduction erosion.

DOI: 10.1130/GSAT-13PresAdrs.1