9418251 Knapp This award supports US collaboration with European and Russian colleagues in the acquisition and analysis of a 500km seismic reflection profile across the Uralian orogen in central Russia. The proposed transect through the southern Urals extends from the East European platform in the Uralian foreland to the West Siberian basin, crossing the Bashkirian foreland fold and thrust belt, the Kraka ophiolite, the Main Uralian fault (suture zone), a collage of oceanic and microcontinental terranes in the hinterland, and the main axis of orogenic magmatism. The data to be acquired will provide the first complete seismic image of the crustal and upper mantle architecture of an intact Paleozoic orogen, and contribute potentially fundamental new insight into the processes of continental collision and subsequent orogenic evolution. Project URSEIS (Urals Reflection Seismic Experiment and Integrated Studies) represents an international collaboration of unprecedentd scale in deep seismic profiling. The US contribution leverages a larger EUROPROBE outlay, principally from DEKORP (Germany) and ROSCOMNEDRA (Russian Committee for Geophysics and Deep Drilling). The program derives from two years of planning, including evaluation of existing Russian geophysical and geological data for the Urals, and follows a successful multi-national pilot survey in 1993. ***
