Chair: Sang-Mook Lee
Working Group Members:
USA - Fernando Martinez (Univ of Hawaii)
USA - Anna-Louise Reysenbach (Portland State Univ)
USA - Wiebke Ziebis (Univ of Southern California)
Canada - Steve Scott (Univ of Toronto)
USA - Ivan Savov (Smithonian Institution)
USA - Carol Chin (Oregon State Univ)
Japan - Kei Okamura (University of Kyoto)
Japan - Toshiro Yamanaka (Kyushu University)
Japan - Toshiya Fujiwara (JAMSTEC)
China - Huaiyang Zhou (Guangzhou Institute for Geochemistry)
France - Etienne Ruellan (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS))
The goal of this working group was to summarize past work on Back-Arc Basins and coordinate future studies. The working group was formed in the Fall of 1997 and was disbanded in 2006.
Book
Back-Arc Spreading Systems - Geological, Biological, Chemical, and Physical Interactions
Editors - David M. Christie, Charles R. Fisher, Sang-Mook Lee, and Sharon Givens
The creation of new oceanic crust at divergent tectonic plate boundaries, most commonly known as mid-ocean ridges, has been a focus of intensive multi-disciplinary scientific study for many years. Paradoxically, new oceanic crust is also created, albeit in smaller amounts, as an adjunct to the destruction of old oceanic crust by subduction at oceanic convergent plate boundaries. This type of crustal creation occurs in narrow extensional back-arc basins that parallel oceanic island arcs on the side away from the subducting plate. Back-arc basin crust is created along spreading centers that closely resemble mid-ocean ridges in their form and function.
Meetings
Back-Arc Basin Studies Workshop
11-13 October 1993 - Seattle, USA
Co-Convenors: Julian Pearce and Kensaku Tamaki
The objectives of this workshop were to define the critical scientific problems currently posed by the study of spreading in back-arc basins, to exchange information concerning recent and planned surveys, to formulate funding proposals for multi-national co-operative study of crustal accretion in back-arc basins, and to produce a white paper specifying the research targets of this InterRidge project. The convenors and invited speakers summarised the current state of knowledge of back-arc basins and 22 workshop participants presented reports on recent and planned research.
