Diversity drives innovation. When professional organizations allow gender inequity to persist, they continually lose talented, valuable individuals who drive economic growth and profits. According to membership data collected by the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG), American Geophysical Union (AGU), and the Geological Society of America (GSA) there is evidence of continued gender inequity in professional geological societies, particularly, in the AAPG. Specifically, there are remaining inequities in the percentage of women holding leadership and technical positions, publishing articles, giving distinguished lectures, and receiving technical and service awards within AAPG, even when compared to the proportional percentage of AAPG members. Because the AAPG is a major international geoscience professional organization, this inequity greatly contributes to the gender and diversity disparity that we see today in the greater geoscience community. The recent compilation and comparison of historical AAPG award and leadership role data allow for an opportunity to provide solutions to advance gender equity and give meaningful power to diversity in AAPG's most visible and prestigious opportunities. By addressing this issue and implementing meaningful measures to improve gender equity, professional societies such as AAPG, can demonstrate tangible efforts to eliminate the discrimination, bias, and barriers many women encounter and support women in having equitable opportunities as professional geoscientists.
Submarine landslides (slides) are some of the most voluminous sediment gravity-flows on Earth and they dominate the stratigraphic record of many sedimentary basins. Their general kinematics and internal structure are relatively well-understood. However, how slides increase in volume and internally deform as they evolve, and how these processes relate, in time and space, to the growth of their basal (shear) zone, are poorly understood. We here use three high-resolution 3D seismic surveys from the Angoche Basin, offshore Mozambique to map strain within a shallowly buried, large, and thus seismically well-imaged slide (c. 530 km3). We document several key kinematic indicators, including broadly NW-trending lateral margins and longitudinal shears bounding and within the slide body, respectively, and broadly NE-trending symmetric pop-up blocks in the slide toe. Approximately 7 km downdip of the slide toe wall, thrusts and related folds also occur within otherwise undeformed slope material, with thrusts detaching downwards onto the downslope continuation of the basal shear zone underlying the slide body. Based on the style, trend, and distribution of these features, and their cross-cutting relationships, we propose an emplacement model involving two distinct phases of deformation: (i) bulk shortening, parallel to the overall SE-directed emplacement direction, with contractional shear strains reaching c. 8%; and (ii) the development of broadly emplacement direction-parallel shear zones that offset the earlier-formed shortening structures. We infer that the contractional strains basinward of the slide body formed due to cryptic basinward propagation of the basal shear zone ahead of and to accommodate updip sliding and shortening associated with, the entire slide mass. Our study demonstrates the value of using 3D seismic reflection data to reveal slide emplacement kinematics, especially the multiphase, non-coaxial nature of deformation, and the dynamics of basal shear zone growth.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.