2008 Articles

Antarctica: A Keystone in a Changing World

Bell, Robin E.; Luyendyk, Bruce P.; Wilson, Terry J.

The 10th International Symposium on Antarctic Earth Sciences was convened at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where 350 researchers presented talks and posters on topics including climate change, biotic evolution, magmatic processes, surface processes, tectonics, geodynamics, and the cryosphere. The symposium resulted in 335 peer-reviewed papers, 225 of which are published online). A proceedings book will also be published by the National Academies Press. Advances in our understanding of Antarctic tectonics were many, often involving techniques that provide information under ice sheets or from proxies such as glacial till to provide clues on provenance. John Goodge (University of Minnesota-Duluth) and coworkers reported a 1440-million-year-old granite boulder from glacial till from the Nimrod Glacier that can be matched to North American Laurentian province granites, supporting the postulated (Southwest U.S.—East Antarctica (SWEAT) hypothesis) fit of East Antarctica and North America more than 1 billion years ago. Considerable debate concerned the formation of the Transantarctic Mountains and the role of plateau collapse.