IPY 2007-2008

Ocean Gateways: their Importance in Earth Evolution: a poster session at the Geological Society of London Bicentenary Conference

The Conference will be held between 10 - 12 September at the QEII Conference Centre, Broad Sanctuary, Westminster, London SW1P 3EE. UK.

Opening and closure of ocean gateways such as the Tasman Sea, Drake Passage and Caribbean had a critical effect on many features of the planets behaviour. They profoundly affected ocean currents and hence the availability of moisture and the surface transport of heat. Understanding such changes is vital for modelling past climate changes, most recently the greenhouse to icehouse transition. Opening and closure of ocean gateways break and create biological land bridges and sea migration routes, and ocean gateway are also sites of asthenospheric mantle flow between ocean basins.

We invite posters on all aspects of ocean gateways, including underlying tectonic causes and their geological, oceanographic and
atmospheric effects. The session is also a contribution to the International Polar Year (IPY) project Plates and Gates.

This session also forms part of, and is sponsored by, the Scientific Committee for Antarctic Research programme ACE (Antarctic Climate Evolution). A limited amount of funding has been made available by ACE to support non-UK and student contributions to this session. Please contact the convenors directly for further information.

Further information is available at the Conference website.

Please contact the conference convenors {encode=" This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it " title="Dr Alan Vaughan"}, {encode=" This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it " title="Dr Phil Leat"}, or {encode=" This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it " title="Dr Alan Haywood"} for details.