2008 Workshop for Advancing Numerical Modeling of Mantle Convection and Lithospheric Dynamics

Building on the success of the 2005 Boulder workshop on Mantle Convection, this workshop, held July 9-11, 2008, at UC Davis (Davis, CA), aimed to be broader in scope by bringing together both the mantle convection and lithospheric dynamics communities to discuss scientific advances and, importantly, technical and scientific issues related to the quantitative modeling of the origin and evolution of the mantle-lithosphere system.

Workshop Information

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Workshop Presentations - Collection of all PDF and PPT presentations given by workshop participants.

Registration: Ninety participants were confirmed for the workshop, including 34 graduate students and 13 postdocs. Due to limits on lecture-hall space, housing space and travel support funds, registration was closed early.

Conveners: Magali I. Billen (UC Davis), Scott King (Virginia Tech), Thorsten Becker (USC), Jolante van Wijk (LANL)

Recent developments in cluster computing, tera-scale resources, and software support and code-sharing efforts of the CIG have brought about major opportunities for scientific progress, such as the prospect of truly combining lithospheric-scale deformation models with mantle convection computations. However, several current science issues remain unresolved and understanding the dynamics of these in a predictive, quantitative sense, is intimately connected to computational issues, for example:

• How can we efficiently model thermo-chemical convection numerically, in spherical geometries, with adequate treatment of entrainment?
• How can we incorporate faulted and moving plate boundaries in spherical geometry, and study regionally realistic subduction system evolution?
• How can we accurately incorporate strain localization and large viscosity variations, and what are the appropriate macroscopic descriptions for sub-scale processes?

The workshop conveners worked together to propose a diverse and stimulating group of speakers and topics. The conference format included a range of keynote and workshop style presentations, with ample room for poster viewing and structured, as well as unstructured, discussion.

We expect participants to arrive on Tuesday evening and depart on Saturday morning. In order to keep the workshop to just three days, on Wednesday through Friday the sessions will run from 8:00 am through 5:30 pm (with morning and afternoon breaks and a lunch break). In the evening on Wednesday and Thursday, poster session will be held in the residence halls. And, on Friday evening, there will be a demonstration of the KeckCAVES Virtual Reality and Visualization research facility.