Geology Bites: An Earth and Planetary Science Podcast

Listen, download, subscribe

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Folarin Kolawole on Continental Rifting

From East Africa to southwest USA, many regions of the Earth’s continental lithosphere are rifting. We see evidence of past rifting along the passive margins of continents that were once contiguous but are now separated by wide oceans. How does something as apparently solid and durable as a continent break apart? In the podcast, Folarin Kolawole describes the various phases of rifting, from initial widespread normal faulting to the localization of stretching along a rift axis, followed by rapid extension and eventual breakup and formation of oceanic lithosphere. Kolawole is especially interested in the early stages of rifting, and in his research he uses field observation, seismic imaging, and mechanical study of rocks. He is Assistant Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Seismology, Geology, and Tectonophysics at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University. Illustrations and full transcript: https://geologybites.com/folarin-kolawole

• 

  Tony Watts on the Mechanics of Tectonic Plates

• 

  Torgeir Andersen on Ultrahigh-Pressure Metamorphism

• 

  Brian Wernicke on Lithospheric Extension and the Basin and Range Province

• 

  Bernhard Steinberger on Whether Hotspots Are Fixed

• 

  Sonia Tikoo on the Moon's Magnetic Field

• 

  Steve Brusatte on the Dinosaurs That Survived the Asteroid

• 

  Alec Brenner on When Tectonic Plates First Moved

• 

  Steve Jacobsen on Materials in Extreme Environments

• 

  Esther Sumner on Turbidity Currents

• 

  Hal Levison on the Mission to Jupiter's Trojan Asteroids

• 

  Sara Pruss on the First Reef Builders

• 

  Michael Manga on Wet Eruptions

• 

  Carina Hoorn on the Evolution of the Amazon Basin

• 

  Anat Shahar on What Makes a Planet Habitable

• 

  Keith Klepeis on How Plutons Form

• 

  Tom Herring on High-Precision Geodesy