Principal Investigator: Daniel Stockli, University of Kansas, Lawrence GeoFrame is an integrative geologic initiative that takes a multi-dimensional view of the building and modification of the North American continent through time and space. The initiative's goals can be achieved by systematic integration of geologic and geochronometric investigations and the results from unprecedented geophysical imaging as part of the EarthScope Program. The overarching EarthScope geophysical experiment has the potential to be a transformative program for the Earth Sciences, building a foundation for a more complete geodynamic understanding of the evolution of the North American continent. GeoFrame has outlined seven focus regions across the conterminous U.S., specifically to address fundamental aspects of the growth and modification (e.g., rifting) of the North American continent through time. The GeoFrame effort envisions these focus site investigations to entail map-scale arrays of passive source seismic receivers and associated active source seismic studies and complementary geophysics in conjunction with geologic-based synthesis and targeted studies. Study of these regions should proceed in an intensified fashion, in concert with planned USArray steps. One of these focus sites is the Walker Lane region in eastern California and western Nevada. We propose to organize a two-day workshop that will bring together a wide spectrum of geologists and geophysicists who are working in the Walker Lane. This GeoFrame focus site workshop is particularly timely given the deployment schedule of the USArray "BigFoot" array. This workshop is intended to facilitate the organization of an integrated geophysical and geological approach to understanding the geodynamic evolution of the Walker Lane.
Implicit in the design and implementation of EarthScope is the recognition that progress on issues such as these requires the collaborative efforts of researchers working in complementary disciplines. This workshop is designed to build a broad-based community of researchers focused on integrative geophysical and geological investigation of the Walker Lane. As such, it will open new avenues of collaboration between working groups and identify new research needs and opportunities. We anticipate the integration of results and efforts with the NSF Margins Rupturing of Continental Lithosphere (RCL) initiative in the Gulf of California by continuing the work onshore from the Gulf of California to the north into Nevada.
