Properties and Processes of Earth′s Lower Crust

Published by the American Geophysical Union as part of the Geophysical Monograph Series, Volume 51.

This AGU volume is a collection of papers which were presented at the IUGG Symposium U7 (Lower Crust: Properties and Processes) held in Vancouver, Canada in August, 1987. The principle objective of this symposium was to update our understanding of the properties of the lower crust and to review the physical and chemical processes which may have taken place and are still going on in the deep crust. Recent high resolution seismic experiments have thrown new light on the structure of the lower crust and crust-mantle transition which shows a much greater degree of complexity than had previously been assumed. In this symposium the complexity problem was examined from a multidisciplinary approach with papers being presented by earth scientists from the seismological, geological, geochemical, geothermal, geoelectric, geomagnetic and tectonophysics communities. A total of 38 oral and 33 poster papers were presented at the meetings. Eighteen of these papers were invited. Twenty nine of the participants have their work presented in this volume.