GEOL 4640 - Regional Tectonics

• Know the driving mechanisms of plate tectonics and the forces of plate motion.
• Understand Archean granulite-gneiss belts, greenstone belts and crustal evolution and the earliest life forms in the Archean.
• Understand Proterozoic mafic-ultramafic complexes, basins, mobile belts and anorgenic magmatism, and crustal evolution and climate in the Proterozoic.
• Understand crustal heat flow, sea-floor spreading at mid-ocean ridges, and the age-depth relation of ocean basins.
• Understand hot spots, aseismic ridges, and the origin of mantle plumes.
• Understand island arcs and volcanism at convergent plate margins, trenches and back-arc basins, accretionary orogens and the processes of subduction, terrane accretion and continental collision.
• Understand plate tectonics and plate boundaries, the geometry of plate motion, and its link to earthquakes.
• Understand secular variations in earth history, and episodicity in plate tectonics, and the supercontinent cycle.
• Understand the assembly the and breakup of the supercontinent Pangea.
• Understand the geologic evolution of the Caledonian-Appalachian belt.
• Understand the geologic evolution of the North American Cordillera.