AWARDEE OF EARTH SCIENCES PRIZE

XIAO XUCHANG

Xiao Xuchang, a Tectonogeologist, was born in Guiyang, Guizhou Province and graduated from the Geological Department of Peking University in 1952. He engaged in geological exploration for Polymetallic ore deposits in 1952-1955 in Gansu Province. Since 1955 he has been working in the Institute of Geology, Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences (CAGS). He has successively served as director of the Institute of Geology, CAGS, Chairman of International Geological Correlation Project (IGCP)-283, now he is the vice-chairman of the Regional Committee of the Himalayas, ILP. He was elected the academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1991.
In the early 1950s, together with his colleagues he discovered and assessed the Xiaotieshan polymetallic ore deposit near Baiyinchang, Gansu Province. He participated in the compilation of A Tectonic Map of China and its explanation Basic Characteristics of the Tectonic Evolution of China, in which tectonic units are distinguished and their evolution is systematically discussed. This is significant to regional geological survey, the prospecting of mineral resources and the inquiry of some major foundational geoscientific questions. In the early 1960s, he finished the “Chromite-bearing mafic-ultramafic rocks and its tectonic setting”, a book approaching the occurrence regularity of the chromite deposits, which was the strategic guide for exploration of the chromite deposits. In the 1970s, he mostly worked on the study of plate tectonics and ophiolite and high pressure metamorphic rocks, As a result, he first discovered a blueschist metamorphic belt in the Qilian Mountains and set up a complete ophiolite section in China. He went to Tibet plateau many times to make explorations and presented new idea on the tectonic evolution of the Tethys and the Gondwanaland, Qinghai-Xizang Plateau, which has attracted close attention from geologists. He proposed that an Archipelago ocean might have been formed during the early-middle Paleozoic in the northwestern China, which subducted and converted into a “Paleo-Asian Mega-Suture Zone” in late-Paleozoic. In the late 1990s, he was in charge of a key project investigating the structure and tectonic evolution of the lithosphere of the NW Tibet Plateau. After having been analysed the results from the project, he suggested that the uplift and the lastest orogeny of the Tibet Plateau was due to the “face to face horizontal compression of the lithosphere” and the “Delamination” and not the so-called “two-sided subduction” arisen from many geologists in recent decade. He, together with his colleagues, first discovered the mantle-derived xenolith and mega-crystals from the alkaline volcanics in W. Kunlun Mtns, which may be an important information for investigation on the structure and evolution of lithosphere in NW Tibet Plateau.