Report on the 3rd Annual CGT international meeting

The Third Annual Center for Global Tectonics International Academic Conference “Constraints on Archean Tectonic Style” was held at CUG Wuhan, Sept. 14-21, 2017, with nearly 150 teachers and students attending from the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Geology and Geophysics, Peking University, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, University of Science and Technology of China, Zhejiang University, China Science Institute of Guangzhou, Zhongshan University, Northwestern University, China University of Geosciences (both Beijing and Wuhan campuses), Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry (CAS), and other universities participated the conference. Representatives from foreign universities came from Univ. of Maryland and Cornell University in USA, the US Geological Survey, Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz Germany, Univ. of Leicester, UK., Curtin University, Australia, Shiraz University, Iran, Middle East Technical University, Turkey, University of Windsor, Canada, and the University of Durham (UK). The conference was opened by Vice President of CUG Lai Xulong with a formal opening speech.

During the meeting, more than 100 scholars from domestic and foreign universities of different disciplines including geophysics, tectonics, structural geology, metamorphic petrology, geochronology, and geodynamic simulation had lively discussions on Archean tectonics, with examples from around the world, and discussions into the nights on frontiers in geosciences, such as how to define how far back in time plate tectonics operated.

On September 19-20, led by Professor Timothy Kusky from CUG Wuhan, Drs. Wang Junpeng and Deng Hao, and Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Geology and Geophysics Researchers Zhai Mingguo and Peng Peng,  more than 20 students and invited international experts participated in the field investigation in the Precambrian Zanhuang Complex, Hebei Province, after the meeting. They visited the Archean melange belt formed during ancient subduction and suturing of an Archean arc in the Central Orogenic Belt with the Eastern Block of the North China Craton, as well as stops examining the regional geology of the tectonic contact relationships between the Eastern Block and Central Orogenic Belt of the Craton, and different suites of intrusions in the basement complex. The trip ended with a visit to a circa 2.1 Ga A-type granite and sill complex in the northern Zanhuang Complex, that may have formed during extension in a back-arc tectonic setting, at a time when the North China Craton is postulated to have had an active Andean-style arc developed along its northern margin. Field discussions by participants were lively and informative, collegial, and focused on discussion of field relationships, interpretation of ages and origins of units visited, various tectonic models, and the style of Archean plate tectonics and its significance to planetary evolution.

The meeting was jointly organized by Center for Global Tectonic, State Key Laboratory of Geological Processes and Mineral Resources, Institute of Science and Technology Development, College of International Cooperation Department and School of Earth Sciences, China University of Geosciences (Wuhan), the Institute of Geology and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Northwestern University, Xi'an.