Pre-existing crustal structures are important in localising strain related to the large-scale evolution of an orogeny. Rheological contrasts between basement blocks will also influence the degree and location of faulting and relative uplift. In northern Nevada, U.S.A., basement architecture in the form of early rifted continental margins, formed during Proterozoic extension, may dictate the subsequent structural geometry of overlying sedimentary sequences during large-scale compression (Figure 1a). Within the region of the Carlin gold trend, specific anticlinal fold and thrust geometries in the sedimentary rocks, involved in various orogenies up until the Laramide, may focus fluid movement and provide effective traps to the system, resulting in the unique gold endowment of the area. Most mineralisation is situated less than 100 m below the Roberts Mountain thrust, which defines the lower boundary of the sequence of deep-water sedimentary rocks that has ridden over both the basement and younger sedimentary layers.

Muntean et al. (2003) argue that the Carlin and Battle Mountain–Eureka (BME) gold trends (Figure 1b) correspond to reactivated normal faults that likely had their origins in Proterozoic rifting. Numerical modelling offers a way to test the basic hypothesis by which “steps”, relics of continental rifting, control the subsequent location of upper crustal faults and anticlinal structures during compression.

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Geodynamics is the application of the basic principles of physics, chemistry and mathematics to understanding how the internal activity of the Earth results in all the geological phenomena and structures apparent at the surface, including seafloor speading and continental drift, mountain building, volcanoes, earthquakes, sedimentary basins, faulting, folding, and more. Geodynamics also deals with how the Earth’s internal activity and structure reveals itself externally in ways both geophysical, its gravitational and magnetic fields, and geochemical, the mineralogy of its rocks and the isotopic composition of its rocks, atmosphere, and ocean. The discipline of geodynamics did not exist until about the early 1970s. The plate tectonics revolution was the impetus for the birth of the subject. Today, geodynamics goes beyond the Earth to consider the interiors and surfaces of other planets and moons in our solar system. While this aspect of the science could be termed planetary dynamics, it involves the same geodynamical processes that shape the Earth, though often with intriguingly different outcomes for the other bodies. <...>

For seismologists the calculation of synthetic (or theoretical) seismograms is a key activity on the path to a better understanding of the structure of the Earth’s interior, or the sources of seismic energy. There are many ways of doing this, depending in particular on the assumptions made in the geophysical model. In the most general case—an Earth in which the properties vary in three dimensions—analytical solutions do not exist