IGCP 648 at the Seventh International Dyke Conference (IDC7) in Beijing, 18-20 August, 2016

IGCP 648 co-sponsored a successful Seventh International Dyke Conference (IDC7) in Beijing (http://idc7.csp.escience.cn). There were 120 attendees, 140 abstracts, from 19 countries of all inhabited continents. The conference included ten oral sessions and three poster sessions. The most relevant session for IGCP 648 was Session 2: “The role of giant dyke swarms in reconstruction of supercontinents/paleocontinents: progress, problems and potential”, but there were many presentations of IGCP 648 members in other sessions too. Altogether 18 presentations have been delivered by IGCP 648 members. This included four keynotes (David Evans – the project co-leader, Sergei Pisarevsky, Richard Ernst and Guochun Zhao) and five invited talks (Steve Denyszyn, Dmitry Gladkochub, Shihong Zhang, Nan Zhang and Ulf Söderlund). There were also two IGCP 648 student’s presentations.

There were three field trips and all went very well with the participants seeing both stunning geology and the impressive landscapes, and cultural/religious centres such as the Wutai Temple Complex in the Wutai Mountains. Members enjoyed intense and fruitful discussions about role of mafic dykes in the problems of global paleogeography and geodynamics.

There was a special event in the conference – the celebration of one of the pioneers in the studies of mafic dykes Professor Henry Halls. This event as well as the whole conference was excellently organised by the conference committee, especially by its General Secretary Professor Peng Peng (Beijing Institute of Geology and Geophysics), and all participants enjoyed it.