Margins are where the action is.
Continental margins are the Earth's principle loci for producing hydrocarbon and metal resources, for earthquake, landslide, volcanic and climatic hazards, and for the greatest population density. Despite the societal and economic importance of margins, many of the mechanical, fluid, chemical and biological processes that shape them are poorly understood. Progress is hindered by the sheer scope of the problems and by the spatial-temporal scale and complexities of the processes. The objective is to develop a self-consistent understanding of the processes that are fundamental to margin formation and evolution. The processes that fundamentally govern the evolution of margins include lithospheric deformation, magmatism and mass fluxes, sedimentation, and fluid flow.