Events & Courses

British Geophysical Association - New Advances in Geophysics (BGA - NAG) is an annual two day meeting to discuss the latest development in geophysics.

The theme of BGA - NAG 2015 is advances in our understanding of "The Lithosphere-Asthenosphere System - Nature of the Tectonic Plates".

The British Geophysical Association AGM will be on Friday 6 February during the lunch break; more details will be available soon.

The conference is marked by prominent invited speakers who will share their expertise and provide insights into the recent advances in Geophysics. 

Plate tectonics has been a fundamental tenet of Earth Science for nearly 50 years, but fundamental questions remain, such as where is the base of the plate and what makes a plate, "plate-like?". A Better understanding of the transition from the rigid lithospheric plate to the weaker mantle beneath - the rheological lithosphere-asthenosphere boundary (LAB) - has important implication for the driving forces of plate tectonics, natural hazard mitigation, basin evolution and hydrocarbon maturation, mantle dynamics, the evolution of the planet and climate change.

There are many proxies used to estimate the depth and nature of the base of tectonic plates, but to date no consensus has been reached. For example, temperature is known to have a strong effect on the mechanical behaviour of rocks. However, it has also been suggested that the chemical composition of the plate provides additional strength or that melt weakens the mantle beneath the plate.

We are at a critical juncture where large-scale efforts using geophysical, geochemical, and geological techniques are being launched to better understand the definition of the tectonic plate. This meeting will bring together world leaders from a wide array of disciplines to better understand the lithosphere-asthenosphere system.

Invited Speakers

• Prof. Jean-Paul Montagner, Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris
• Prof. Shun-ichiro Karato, Yale University
• Dr. Ulrich Faul, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Prof. Karen Fischer, Brown University
• Prof. Lars Stixrude, University College London

Provisional Programme:

Day 1 (Thursday 5 February):

09.15: Registration
10.00: Conference starts
12.20–13.20: Lunch
17:00–19:00: Poster Session & Wine Reception
19.00: End

Day 2 (Friday 6 February):

09.00: Start
13:00–14:00: Lunch and British Geophysical Association AGM
16:00: End

Call for Abstracts

Authors are invited to submit abstracts for oral and poster presentation. Please note that the deadline for abstract submission is 5pm on 1st December 2014 Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).

• For more information please visit the conference website

Registration

Fees

Student: £ 30
Academic: £ 70
Industry: £ 90

• Registration is online via the Conference website

Convenors

• Catherine Rychert, University of Southampton
• Satish Singh, Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris