Journal of the Geological Society; September 1984; v. 141; no. 5;
p. 781-782; DOI: 10.1144/gsjgs.141.5.0781
© 1984 Geological Society of London
The Andes
Dr C. M. Bell has provided the following Introduction to the published papers:
The Andes have been described as typical of an orogenic belt produced by subduction of an oceanic plate beneath a continental margin. Models of Andean geological evolution are, however, commonly poorly constrained due to the limited amount of data available from this very large area. Much research has been directed towards specific problems such as the magmatic rocks, but knowledge and understanding of many other aspects of Andean geology are still in their infancy. The purpose of the meeting of 5 October was to encourage geologists currently working in the Andes to provide up-to-date accounts of research in progress. Consequently the resulting collection of papers covers a wide range of topics and geographical areas. A major problem of Andean geology is the relative inaccessibility of much of the published data. This results both from language barriers and the limited distribution of some South American publications. One of the aims of this set of papers is to provide access to aspects of this widely scattered and somewhat obscure literature.
The authors of the first two papers both consider aspects of Andean subduction. Wortel highlights the fact that despite a relatively constant convergence rate along the length of South America the late Cenozoic geology shows distinct variations in seismicity, tectonics and magmatic activity. He considers that the main factor controlling these variations is the age of subducted lithosphere. A lesser factor is the subduction of aseismic ridges and seamount
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This 250-word extract was created in the absence of an abstract.
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