Earthquakes, volcanoes, and impact craters are ubiquitous expressions of dynamic processes active within the Earth and other bodies in the solar system. They cannot by themselves, however, reveal the details of the underlying physical mechanisms. Laboratory experiments on candidate materials subjected to extreme conditions are a fundamental component of a larger strategy to better understand and constrain geological, geophysical, and geochemical observations. Predictions and inferences of geodynamic processes require extrapolation of lab-calibrated rheological models to geological time and spatial scales that are many orders of magnitude larger than in the laboratory. The complexity of rock deformation processes together with the uncertainties inherent in using existing techniques make extrapolating laboratory-derived rheological models to larger-scale deformation challenging. Application of emerging beamline capabilities, such as the ability to probe the microstructures of multi-grain and multi-phase materials in three dimensions, in real time, will revolutionize the testing and calibration of rheological models by elucidating the underlying physical processes of rock deformation. Funded by the National Science Foundation, the ISRD Research Coordination Network will facilitate the integration of beamline technologies with deformation experiments and create new directions for experimental rock deformation research.

Steering Committee

Wenlu Zhu, University of Maryland, Chair
Nick Beeler, US Geological Survey
Haiyan Chen, Stony Brook University
Dave Goldsby, University of Pennsylvania
Lars Hansen, University of Minnesota
Caleb Holyoke, University of Akron
Daniel Hussey, National Institute of Standards and Technology
Arjun Kohli, Stanford University
Harry Lisabeth, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Laurent Montesi, University of Maryland
Julie Newman, Texas A&M

Darren Pagan, CHESS, Cornell University
Mark Rivers, University of Chicago, GSECARS
Heather Savage, University of California, Santa Cruz
Douglas Schmitt, Purdue University
Phil Skemer, Washington University in St. Louis
Yanbin Wang, University of Chicago, GSECARS
Jessica Warren, University of Delaware
Don Weidner, Stony Brook University
Matthew Whitaker, Stony Brook University/NSLS-II
Zhong Zhong, Brookhaven National Laboratory

Advisory Committee

Pamela Burnley, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Chair
Roland Bürgmann, University of California, Berkeley
William Durham, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Andrew Freed, Purdue University
Shun Karato, Yale University
David Kohlstedt, University Minnesota

Andreas Kronenberg, Texas A&M
Nadia Lapusta, California Institute of Technology
George Pharr, Texas A&M
Terry Tullis, Brown University
Francois Renard, University of Oslo, Norway
Robert Farla, DESY, Germany