Timing, Tempo and Drivers of Lithospheric Evolution

The inaugural Gordon Research Seminar (GRS) on Geochronology will emphasize innovative research on lithospheric evolution that spans all of Earth's history and advancements in geochronology that improve temporal constraints on lithospheric processes. The GRS is led by and exclusively for early-career scientists, including graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, and other scientists with comparable levels of experience.

The lithosphere contributes a small volume of Earth’s makeup, and is colloquially called the “thin skin” of the Earth. However the lithosphere ultimately controls the distribution of marine and terrestrial geospheres and impacts landscapes, climates, and evolutionary trajectories of biota. Large-scale tectonic processes that create, transform, and destroy the lithosphere operate over highly variable timescales (days to hundreds of millions of years), and geochronology allows us to determine their absolute timing and rates. The Geochronology GRS will run August 12-13 at Mount Snow and will include both scientific sessions as well as a mentoring session highlighting different career paths and how to overcome common challenges faced by early-career researchers. The GRS provides an additional opportunity for student and early-career scientists to share and exchange new ideas in a peer-focused environment without professional pressures and build collaborative relationships with future colleagues and peers. We encourage GRS applicants to also attend the accompanying Gordon Research Conference (August 13-18, 2023).