The belove paper will be presented by BUSFAR who is the graduate student on February 28, 2004.   The paper could be download from the site as: Lithospheric strength and its relaionship to the elastic and seismogenic layer thickness

Also, presentation form prepared by Busfar is present as online from the site:

The professional background of author for the paper of week is given in below.

 

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A. B. Watts Professor of Marine Geology and Geophysics tony@earth.ox.ac.uk Personal Web Page The main focus of my research has been to use geological and geophysical techniques to study the Earth's crust and upper mantle beneath the world's ocean basins and their margins. Seismic reflection and refraction profile, gravity and magnetic, and swath bathymetry data acquired on research vessels have been used to determine information on the structure, tectonic evolution and sea-floor processes at oceanic islands and seamounts, aseismic ridges, deep-sea trench island-arc systems, and passive continental margins. By comparing observations of the structure of oceanic islands and passive margins to predictions of simple thermal and mechanical models, constraints have been placed on the response of the oceanic crust and upper mantle to long-term (i.e. > 1 Ma) geological loads. Results show that the oceanic crust and upper mantle is capable of supporting volcanic and sedment loads for long periods of geological time by flexing over broad regions of the ocean floor. A major part of my research has been to quantitatively understand the phenomena of flexure, how it depends on load and plate age, and how it contributes to the stratigraphic "architecture" of rift-type basins in continental margins, the growth and decay of oceanic islands, the structural styles that develop in mountain belts, and the evolution of planetary landscapes. Current research is focused on the elastic and seismogenic layer thickness and the information that these parameters provide on the mechanical properties, rheology, and strength of the Earth's lithosphere. Lin, A. T-S. and A. B. Watts, Origin of the West Taiwan basin by orogenic loading and flexure of a rifted continental margin. J. Geophys. Res. 107, No B9, 2185, doi:10.1029/2001JB000669, 2002 Stewart, J., Watts, A.B., and Bagguley, J., A 3-D analysis of gravity anomalies, subsidence history and crustal structure at the continental margin offshore Namibia: Geophys. J. Int., v. 141, p. 724-746, 2000 Watts, A.B., and Zhong, S., Observations of flexure and the rheology of oceanic lithosphere: Geophys. J. Int, v. 142, p. 855-875 2000 Watts, A. B. Isostasy and Flexure of the Lithosphere. Cambridge University Press. 472 pp, 2001 S. Zhong. and A. B. Watts, Constraints on the dynamics of mantle plumes from uplift of the Hawaiian Islands. Earth Planet. Sci Letts., 203, 105-116, 2002