1st EGU Summer School: Structural analysis of crystalline rocks

The school is aimed at teaching advanced techniques of quantitative structural analysis in deformed basement rocks. It is addressed at PhD and post-doc students and early career researchers.

Read more on the official Homepage.

The school is divided into two parts:

1. Two days of field work on glacier-polished outcrops in the Nevessee (Lago di Neves) area. The glacially polished exposures in this area are spectacular and provide an ideal natural lab for field training. The area hosts an impressive variety of mesoscale structures, with classic examples of multiphase magmatic intrusion, magma mingling structures, localisation of ductile shear zones and their interaction, polyphase veining and brittle faulting.

2. The field workshop will be followed by three days of in-classroom teaching in Varna (Brixen) on the theory of deformation and of quantitative methods of micro- and meso-structural analysis of deformed rocks.

   The different aspects and approaches to structural analysis of crystalline rocks that will be covered are:

   • texture analysis of mylonites with a dedicated session on analysis of deformation microstructures and crystallographic preferred orientations in granitoid mylonites;
   • simulation of deformation processes by rock-analogue and natural and synthetic rock experiments;
   • numerical modelling of deformation structures;
   • physical and chemical fluid-rock interaction in ductile shear zone and fault networks;
   • shear heating in ductile shear zones;
   • constraining strain rates in shear zones.

• Giorgio Pennacchioni (Padua, Italy)
• Neil Mancktelow (Zürich, Switzerland)
• Georg Dresen (Potsdam, Germany)
• Bernd Leiss (Göttingen, Germany)
• Alfredo Camacho (Manitoba, Canada)
• Stephen Cox (Canberra, Australia)
• Luca Menegon (Tromsø, Norway)
• Dani Schmid (Oslo, Norway)

This summer school had 34 students from 17 countries as participants.

The EGU summer school on structural analysis of crystalline rocks was excellent. It was a great chance to meet and network with other students and also to look at some outstanding rocks outside of my usual field of study. The lectures were all well-pitched considering the varying expertise among the students. We all came away as much better structural geologists.

I learnt a lot, studied beautiful outcrops and got the opportunity to come together with early stage researchers and senior researchers from all over the world with a wide range of expertise but all related to my interests.

It was useful to see how geologists from different structural disciplines (experimental, numerical modeling, structure and geochemistry) approach the same problem.

It was a chance for discussion of many aspects of basement geology that I wanted to know more about, and I also made a great many contacts who I hope to keep in touch with in the future as our careers develop. The course will have a great impact on my PhD.

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