© S. Dominguez (Montpellier)
Asia, the largest continent on Earth, exposes several exceptional features such as the spectacular Himalayan collision belt, the Tibetan high plateau, the Turfan deep depression, the wide Central Asian accretionary orogen, the old North China craton, several intracontinental orogens, active fold-and-thrust belts and volcanoes, and numerous world-class mineral deposits. Thus the Asian continent offers good opportunities to understand the Earth geodynamic evolution and attracted a great attention of the geoscientific community since more than one century.
Since the last three decades, much fundamental understanding has been achieved in the tectonics of Asia, especially by multidisciplinary efforts through several important national research programs and international scientific collaborations, such as Chinese program on the geodynamic and geographic evolution of Asian continent, Sino-French collaboration in Tibet, French-Japanese collaboration in Pacific in the beginning of the eighties of the last century.
Major fundamental advances have been realized on the mechanisms of the lithosphere evolution by the study of the tectonic events of the Asian continent, the evolution and uplift of the Tibetan plateau, the paleogeographic evolution of Asian blocks, and the exploration of oceanic trenches. However, numerous essential questions remain unanswered or are hotly debated, such as the mechanism of Mesozoic continental extension in East Asia, the geodynamic evolution of Central Asian Orogenic Belt, the history of the Mongol-Okhotsk suture, the tectonic evolution of Japanese islands, and other islands arcs rimming the continent, the mechanisms controlling the formation of large size ore deposits, …
In order to exchange new results obtained from different disciplines, and in honor of the scientific contribution to Asia geology since the last 30 years done by Jacques Charvet, the “Institut des Sciences de la Terre d’Orléans” associated with the Société Géologique de France will organize an international conference on the Tectonics of Asia. This meeting will provide the opportunity for geoscientists from numerous countries to discuss up-dated geological understanding, to establish new research objectives in this domain, and to reinforce international collaborations.
