Location: Australia (western Victoria, South Australia)
Leaders: Prof. Ray Cas; Teagan Blaikie, Julie Boyce; Patrick  Hayman; Simone Jordan; Jacqueline Miles, Andrew Needham, Felicity Piginis, Gemma Prata and Jozua van Otterloo (Monash University)

Post-conference: 9 - 13 July
Fee: $825 AUD
Start and End in Melbourne (Australia)

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The Newer Volcanics Province is the youngest and arguably the only still active volcanic province in Australia. It last erupted 4,500 years ago and preserves some 400 eruption centres and lava flow plains, including some of the most spectacular maars worldwide. The fieldtrip will begin in Melbourne and visit some of the best preserved volcanoes and volcanic successions in the province, en route to Mt Gambier in South Australia, the youngest volcano in Australia. The return trip to Melbourne will be via the Great Ocean Road to take in the spectacular coastal scenery, which is some of the best in Australia, and to visit a Tertiary surtseyan volcanic succession, before returning to Melbourne. The trip will include great volcanology, great scenery, some great Australian wines, and the opportunity to see different native animals.

Location: Australia (Queensland)
Leaders: Dr. Scott Bryan (University of Queensland), Dr Dougal Jerram (University of Durham)

Post-conference: 8 - 14 July
Fee: $1550 AUD
Start and End in Hamilton Island (QLD, Australia)

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The Early Cretaceous Whitsunday Silicic Large Igneous Province (SLIP) is the largest of the world’s known SLIPs with an extrusive volume of >2.2 million km3. The Whitsunday SLIP shows all the hallmarks of other major LIP events in Earth history (large areal extent, eruptive volume, intraplate setting, and short eruptive pulse(s) when the majority of the igneous volume was emplaced), and its formation coincided with an important clustering of LIP events in the Early Cretaceous. However, it is volumetrically dominated by silicic igneous compositions. Silicic LIP formation in general, appears related to their emplacement along fertile continental margins where widespread partial melting (driven by large mantle-derived thermal and material fluxes into the crust) and consequent silicic magma eruption replaced the more typical outpouring of large volumes of basaltic magma.

Like the other major Phanerozoic SLIPs (Sierra Madre Occidental, Mexico; Chon Aike Province, South America-Antarctica) large sections of these provinces are poorly studied and unmapped. Many aspects of these provinces remain poorly understood such as their volcanic and geochemical evolution, the interrelationships between magmatism, extension and the formation of volcanic rifted margins, and genetic linkages between magmas and epithermal mineralisation. The superb cross-sectional exposure provided by the tilted and partly exhumed volcanic sequences of the Whitsunday SLIP give rare insights into the core architecture of other younger or less well-dissected or exposed, large-volume silicic-dominated volcanic provinces. Significant research over the last 20 years has provided new information on the volcanic geology, igneous petrology/geochemistry, regional setting and timing of Whitsunday SLIP magmatism. This field workshop will review these research results and build on these investigations to focus on several questions:

• What are the dynamics and characteristics of large-volume silicic supereruptions and why are Plinian fall deposits rarely formed and preserved in SLIPs and other large-volume silicic volcanic provinces?
• What do the vent regions look like to the supervolcanoes (e.g.., structures, lithologies, thicknesses of sequences, etc.) that produce the large volumes of ignimbrite?
• What do the long-term temporal compositional trends of the volcanic successions tell us about how magma generating source regions may be evolving through time?
• What is the role and extent of mantle-derived inputs in SLIP magmatism and crustal growth, and how relevant are mush models for explaining the origin of such large volumes of rhyolite?
• How does large-volume silicic magma generation impact on the continuing evolution of crustal composition, mineralogy, structure and its behaviour during subsequent phases of rifting?
• How does SLIP magmatism integrate with regional tectonic models of volcanic rifted margin formation?

Field Trip VF03: Drought-quenching submarine volcanic textures: lavas, sills and felsic pyroclastic deposits of the Ural Volcanics, New South Wales scheduled from 28 June to 1 July 2011 has been cancelled.

Location: Australia (Tasmania)
Leaders: Jocelyn McPhie (University of Tasmania), Yoshi Goto (Muroran, Japan)

Post-conference: 8 - 10 July
Fee: $495 AUD
Start and End in Burnie (TAS, Australia)

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Bookings for VF04 Tertiary submarine basaltic volcanism, Cape Grim and Stanley, NW Tasmania have noe closed. No late bookings will be accepted

Pillow lavas and related volcanic facies of Tertiary are well exposed in coastal sections near Stanley and Cape Grim in northwestern Tasmania. Two full field days are planned. Travel to and from Melbourne adds about half a day at the beginning and at the end.

The Stanley Peninsula provides excellent examples of pillow lavas, lava lobes, megapillows, peperite and a high-level basaltic intrusion. All exposures are in shore platforms and cliffs on the coast and easy to access although low tide is required.

At Cape Grim, pillow fragment breccia and pillow lavas related to a small seafloor volcano are very well exposed, together with basalt-derived sandstone intruded by basaltic dykes. Cape Grim is one of the type-localities of the mineral species Natrolite (a type of zeolite), which was found in vesicles and fractures of the pillow lavas.

Field Trip VF05 Auckland Volcanic Field: basaltic volcanism and society scheduled from 8 – 9 July 2011 has been cancelled.

Please contact the Field Trip Leader or the General Assembly Managers directly if you have any questions.

Field Trip VF06: Young caldera volcanism: Taupo and Okataina scheduled from 11 – 15 July 2011 has been cancelled.

Please contact the Field Trip Leader or the General Assembly Managers directly if you have any questions.

Fieldtrip VF07: Getting into hot water: geological controls on fluid flow and geothermal activity in the central Taupo Volcanic Zone, New Zealand scheduled from 10 - 13 July 2011 has been cancelled.

Please contact the Field Trip Leader or the General Assembly Managers directly if you have any questions.

Fieldtrip VF08 Active volcanism in the Vanuatu volcanic arc, SW Pacific scheduled from 25 June – 1 July 2011 has been cancelled.

Please contact the Field Trip Leader or the General Assembly Managers directly if you have any questions.

Field Trip VF09: Prehistoric and recent deposits of Mayon and Taal volcanoes scheduled from 26 June– 1 July 2011 has been cancelled.

Please contact the Field Trip Leader or the General Assembly Managers directly if you have any questions.

VF10: Grace and Hazard of LUSI, and Bromo and Ijen Volcanoes scheduled from 26 – 29 June 2011 has been cancelled.

Please contact the Field Trip Leader or the General Assembly Managers directly if you have any questions.

VF11: Rabaul Caldera scheduled from 10 – 11 July 2011 has been cancelled.

Please contact the Field Trip Leader or the General Assembly Managers directly if you have any questions.

Field Trip PF01: The Australian 'mega-tsunami' debate scheduled from 22 - 26 June 2011 has been cancelled.
Please contact the Field Trip Leader or the General Assembly Managers directly if you have any questions.

Field Trip CF01: New Zealand Cryosphere in a Changing Climate scheduled from 21 - 27 June 2011 has been cancelled.

Please contact the Field Trip Leader or the General Assembly Managers directly if you have any questions.

Location: New Zealand (Wellington)
Leaders: Mark Stirling, Russ Van Dissen, Nicola Litchfield (GNS Science, New Zealand)

Pre-conference: 26 - 27 June, arrange departure for 28 June
Fee: $300 AUD
Start and End Wellington (New Zealand)

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A large proportion of New Zealand's prime real estate lies on the boundary of the Australian and Pacific plates as the capital city of Wellington. Here, relative plate motion of about 40 mm/year is accommodated by a series of oblique-slip faults and a major subduction zone. No part of the greater Wellington city is further than about 5km from these faults, and not surprisingly, the earthquake risk (potential loss due to hazardous earthquake events) posed by these earthquake sources is by far the highest in the country. In this two day fieldtrip you will view the major faults of the Wellington region, and your fieldtrip leaders will be experts in the earthquake histories, prehistories and hazards of the faults. Primary foci will be the Wellington, Ohariu and Wairarapa Faults, the latter being the source of New Zealand's largest historical earthquake (Magnitude 8.1 in 1855). We hope you will join us on this exciting and thought-provoking fieldtrip to the place where the plate boundary meets the capital city.

After the Wellington fieldtrip we can also take interested participants down to Canterbury to view the long term effects of the M7.1 4 Sept 2010 Darfield, Canterbury earthquake. Arrangements and costs will be addressed via direct communication with the fieldtrip leader.