The fifth State of the Arc (SOTA) conference will be convened September 19-25, 2010 at Syros and Santorini (Petros M. Nomikos Conference Centre), Greece. Its theme will be 'Subduction to Eruption'.

The goal of the Conference is to bring together about 75 international researchers and students whose work bears on these themes. Experience has shown that a 'Gordon Conference'-style format allows SOTA meetings to address critical questions and facilitate new research directions amongst participants. Approximately 8 keynote speakers will be invited whose tasks will be to summarize past and cutting edge research bearing on the aforementioned sub-themes. Other participants will present relevant research results, primarily in poster format.  The majority of the time of the conference will revolve around extended and focused discussion of the relation between geodynamic processes, magma differentiation, and volcano hazards.  Four provocateurs will be invited to stimulate these discussions.

Field trips from both conference centers on Syros and Santorini will be conducted to view important aspects of subduction and arc and volcanism. The field trip on Syros will explore blueschist and eclogite facies fore-arc assemblages and the island’s main ophiolitic sequence. Santorini’s field trip will center on volcanic hazards by observing the Minoan pumice and the volcano stratigraphy exposed in the walls of around Santorini caldera from a hired ship. The goal will be to inspect the evolution through time of a calc-alkaline volcano that culminated in a cataclysmically erupted rhyolite.

A committee of 6 (Simon Turner & Tracy Rushmer, Macquarie Univ.; Jon Blundy & John C. Schumacher, Bristol Univ.; Ian Smith, Auckland Univ.; Mark Reagan, Univ. of Iowa) will convene the meeting and will be responsible for inviting keynote speakers, for attracting other participants, and for guiding the scientific content of the meeting.

Source: www.sota2010.com