Université d'Orléans

Asia, the largest continent on Earth, exposes several exceptional features such as the spectacular Himalayan collision belt, the Tibetan high plateau, the Turfan deep depression, the wide Central Asian accretionary orogen, the old North China craton, several intracontinental orogens, active fold-and-thrust belts and volcanoes, and numerous world-class mineral deposits. Thus the Asian continent offers good opportunities to understand the Earth geodynamic evolution and attracted a great attention of the geoscientific community since more than one century.