An introductory overview to the concept of displaced terranes

1983 ◽  
Vol 20 (6) ◽  
pp. 994-999 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zvi Ben-Avraham ◽  
Amos Nur

On land much of the Pacific margin is composed of allochthonous terranes, which are of continental and noncontinental origins. In the oceans numerous oceanic rises, some of which are submerged continental fragments, are presently embedded in the oceanic plates. These oceanic rises are probably future accreted terranes. They thus represent one stage in the development of allochthonous terranes found in orogenic zones. Minerals found in these terranes were formed at locations that in the past could have been thousands of kilometres away. This is because some oceanic terranes were split into several parts that moved with their respective plates in different directions. Also, faulting at the continental margins caused large-scale concurrent and post-accretionary horizontal translations of hundreds of kilometres of the allochthonous terranes.Studying the allochthonous terranes may provide important information about the Paleozoic and early Mesozoic history of the Pacific Ocean, because most of the oceanic crust of this age has disappeared leaving only those allochthonous terranes that were once oceanic plateaus within this crust. Understanding the history of the Pacific basin plates and of the allochthonous terranes may lead to the discovery of minerals within the submerged oceanic plateaus.

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicky M. Wright ◽  
◽  
Maria Seton ◽  
Simon E. Williams ◽  
R. Dietmar Müller

2021 ◽  
Vol 99 ◽  
pp. 122-146
Author(s):  
Anna Shnukal

AbstractThroughout its European history, Australia has solved recurrent labor shortages by importing workers from overseas. Situated on shipping lanes between the Pacific and Indian Oceans, the northern Australian pearlshelling industry became a significant locus of second-wave transnational labor flows (1870–1940) and by the 1880s was dependent on indentured workers from the Pacific and Southeast Asia. Exempted from the racially discriminatory Immigration Restriction Act of 1901, indentured Asian seamen, principally Japanese, maintained the industry until the outbreak of the Pacific War in 1941. The Torres Strait pearlshelling industry, centered on Thursday Island in Far North Queensland, resumed in 1946 amid general agreement that the Japanese must not return. Nevertheless, in 1958, 162 Okinawan pearling indents arrived on Thursday Island in a controversial attempt to restore the industry's declining fortunes. This article is intended as a contribution to the history of transnational labor movements. It consults a range of sources to document this “Okinawan experiment,” the last large-scale importation of indentured Asian labor into Australia. It examines Australian Commonwealth-state tensions in formulating and adopting national labor policy; disputes among Queensland policy makers; the social characteristics of the Okinawan cohort; and local Indigenous reactions. Also discussed are the economics of labor in the final years of the Torres Strait pearling industry. This study thus extends our knowledge of transnational labor movements and the intersection of early postwar Australian-Asian relations with Queensland Indigenous labor policy. It also foreshadows contemporary Indigenous demands for control of local marine resources.


Author(s):  
Elizabeth Sinn

This chapter takes a broad look at the Pacific Ocean in relation to Chinese migration. As trade, consumption and capital flows followed migrants, powerful networks were woven and sustained; in time, the networks fanned across the Pacific from British Columbia along the West Coast of the United States to New Zealand and Australia. The overlapping personal, family, financial and commercial interests of Chinese in California and those in Hong Kong, which provide the focus of this study, energized the connections and kept the Pacific busy and dynamic while shaping the development of regions far beyond its shores. The ocean turned into a highway for Chinese seeking Gold Mountain, marking a new era in the history of South China, California, and the Pacific Ocean itself.


Author(s):  
Peter Dauvergne

Chapters 2–6 survey the political and socioeconomic forces underlying the global sustainability crisis. Understanding the scale and depth of contemporary forces of capitalism and consumerism requires a close look at the consequences of imperialism and colonialism on patterns of violence and exploitation. This chapter begins this process of understanding by sketching the history of ecological imperialism after 1600, seeing this as a reasonable starting date for the beginning of what many scholars are now calling the Anthropocene Epoch (or the age of humans, replacing the geologic epoch of the Holocene beginning 12,000 years ago). It opens with Captain Pedro Fernandes de Queirós’s voyage across the Pacific Ocean in 1605–06 to “discover” modern-day Vanuatu, before turning to look more globally at the devastation of imperialism – and later colonialism – for the South Pacific, the Americas, Africa, and Asia. Over this time conquerors enslaved and murdered large numbers of indigenous people; cataclysmic change came as well, however, from the introduction of European diseases, plants, and animals. This chapter’s survey of imperialism, colonialism, and globalization sets the stage for Chapter 3, which explores the devastating history of the South Pacific island of Nauru after 1798.


Geophysics ◽  
1967 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 678-707 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. L. Richards ◽  
V. Vacquier ◽  
G. D. Van Voorhis

The direction and magnitude of the magnetization of a uniformly magnetized structure can be computed by combining topographic and magnetic surveys. The previously reported method has been extended to include more than one structure, each possessing its particular magnetization. Also, the bottom of the structure need not be a horizontal plane but can be an arbitrary surface. The method was applied to 21 seamounts, one laccolith and two Aleutian volcanoes. Four of the seamounts were found to be reversely magnetized. The virtual paleomagnetic pole positions for 16 Pacific Ocean seamounts, representing three widely separated locations, are significantly different from the present geomagnetic pole position but near Mesozoic virtual pole positions from Australia. For two locations, radiometric age determinations give an average date for their formation in the Cretaceous. The apparent 30 degree shift in geomagnetic latitude of the seamounts is interpreted as the result of large scale movements of the Pacific Ocean floor or, alternatively, as the result of the paleomagnetic equator being north of its present position in the Pacific during the growth of the seamounts.


2016 ◽  
Vol 283 (1844) ◽  
pp. 20162337 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steffen Kiel

Deep-sea hydrothermal vents and methane seeps are inhabited by members of the same higher taxa but share few species, thus scientists have long sought habitats or regions of intermediate character that would facilitate connectivity among these habitats. Here, a network analysis of 79 vent, seep, and whale-fall communities with 121 genus-level taxa identified sedimented vents as a main intermediate link between the two types of ecosystems. Sedimented vents share hot, metal-rich fluids with mid-ocean ridge-type vents and soft sediment with seeps. Such sites are common along the active continental margins of the Pacific Ocean, facilitating connectivity among vent/seep faunas in this region. By contrast, sedimented vents are rare in the Atlantic Ocean, offering an explanation for the greater distinction between its vent and seep faunas compared with those of the Pacific Ocean. The distribution of subduction zones and associated back-arc basins, where sedimented vents are common, likely plays a major role in the evolutionary and biogeographic connectivity of vent and seep faunas. The hypothesis that decaying whale carcasses are dispersal stepping stones linking these environments is not supported.


2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Angela Schottenhammer

Abstract Background Connections between China and the new Spanish colonies in America are known for an exchange of silver for silks and porcelains. That also medicinal drugs and medicinal knowledge crossed the Pacific Ocean is hardly known or discussed. Myroxylon balsamum (L.) Harms var. pereirae (Royle) Harms (“New World“ or “Peruvian balsam“) is a botanical balsam that has a long history of medicinal use, particularly as antiseptic and for wound healing. Except for a Chinese article discussing the reception of balsam in China and Japan, no scientific studies on its impact in China and Japan and the channels of transfer from the Americas to Asia exist. Methods Description: (1) This section provides a general introduction into Commiphora gileadensis (“Old World” balsam) as a medicinal category and discusses the specific medicinal properties of Myroxylon balsamum (L.) Harms var. pereirae (Royle) Harms. The section “Historical research and uses” provides a brief survey on some historical analyses of balsam. Aim, design, setting: (2) Applying a comparative textual and archaeological analysis the article critically examines Chinese and Japanese sources (texts, maps) to show (i) what Chinese and Japanese scholars knew about balsam, (ii) where and how it was used, and (iii) to identify reasons why the “digestion” of knowledge on balsam as a medicinal developed so differently in China and Japan. Results and discussion This chapter discusses the introduction of “Peruvian balsam” into, its uses as a medicinal as well as its scholarly reception in early modern China and Japan and introduces the channels of transmission from Spanish America to Asia. It is shown that Myroxylon balsamum (L.) Harms var. pereirae (Royle) Harms was partly a highly valued substance imported from the Americas into China and Japan. But the history of the reception of medicinal knowledge on Peruvian balsam was significantly different in China and Japan. Conclusions In Japan, the knowledge on Myroxylon balsamum was continuously updated, especially through mediation of Dutch physicians; Japanese scholars, doctors and pharmacists possessed a solid knowledge on this balsam, its origin and its medicinal uses. In China, on the contrary, there was no further “digestion” or development of the knowledge on either Myroxylon balsamum (L.) Harms var. pereirae (Royle) Harms or Commiphora gileadensis. By the late nineteenth century, related medicinal and even geographic knowledge had mostly been lost. The interest in “balsam” in late Qing scholarship was pure encyclopaedic and philosophic.


2001 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 628-629 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shigeki Hada ◽  
Mitsumasa Ito ◽  
C.A. Landis ◽  
P.A. Cawood

2010 ◽  
Vol 277 (1699) ◽  
pp. 3445-3451 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alice Cibois ◽  
Jean-Claude Thibault ◽  
Eric Pasquet

Little is known about the effect of quaternary climate variations on organisms that inhabited carbonate islands of the Pacific Ocean, although it has been suggested that one or several uplifted islands provided shelter for terrestrial birds when sea-level reached its highest. To test this hypothesis, we investigated the history of colonization of the Tuamotu reed-warbler ( Acrocephalus atyphus ) in southeastern Polynesia, and found high genetic structure between the populations of three elevated carbonate islands. Estimates of time since divergence support the hypothesis that these islands acted as refugia during the last interglacial maximum. These findings are particularly important for defining conservation priorities on atolls that endure the current trend of sea-level rise owing to global warming.


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