Overview: The Subduction Factory Mini-lessons

Accretionary vs. erosive subduction margins
This module examines the nature and variability of subduction margins through examination of data sets that document subduction zone inputs, deformation, and resulting morphology in different settings.

Contemporary Climate Oscillations: ENSO and a case study of the Huanghe River
This module uses data of monthly mean sea level pressure from Tahiti and Darwin, Australia to calculate the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) of El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) for comparison with the Huanghe River (China) discharge and correlated anthropogenic effects.

Subduction zone metamorphism
This module introduces students to subduction zone metamorphism through the examination of rock samples, calculating P-T-t paths, and comparing them to thermal model predictions of P-T paths.

Exploring Styles of Extension in the Gulf of California
An introduction to processes associated with continental rifting, and resulting fault geometries and distributions, and lithospheric responses, using seismic data examples from the Gulf of California.

Bathymetry of Rifted Margins
This is one component of the Rupturing Continental Lithosphere suite of mini-lessons. Students investigate the morphology of rifted margins by creating topographic/bathymetric maps and profiles across the Red Sea ...

Slab temperatures control melting in subduction zones, what controls slab temperature?
Hands-on demonstrations of advection and diffusion of heat in subduction zones, and their controls on slab thermal evolution and relationships to melting, using analog models.

Overview: Rupturing Continental Lithosphere Mini-Lesson Sequence
An examination of two contrasting rifted margins: the Red Sea and Gulf of California, leading to identification of similarities and differences associated with rifting and lithospheric rupture in each setting.

Role of Plate Motion Obliquity in Rifting
A module that uses Euler poles to describe the relative motion between the Baja Microplate and North American Plate, highlighting how the obliquity of rifting changes along strike in the Gulf of California.

Central American Arc Volcanoes, Petrology, and Geochemistry
This module teaches basic concepts in igneous petrology through relating hand specimen identification of lavas to major element geochemistry, using the Central American volcanic arc as an example.