Our CAS group represented an extended version of the theoretical part of a major cross-disciplinary NFR-funded geology-physics program first started in 1996, called Fluid-Rock-Interactions. The activities where focused towards the following scientific problems: 1) Pressure solution; 2) Crack healing; 3) Hydrofracturing and deformation assisted fluid flow in rocks; 4) Growth and dissolution processes and its coupling to stress;

5) Hydrothermal vents associated with sill-intrusions in sedimentary basins; 6) Continental margin processes and the formation of microcontinents; and 7) Geological pattern-formation in general.

CAS collaboration resulted in major advances in our research on pressure solution, hydrofracturing, hydrothermal vent generation, the origin of ocean islands and in the coupling between fluid flow and deformation in the Earth’s crust. Two Nature papers were published by CAS participants during the project period, and 3 papers are currently under review in Nature, Science or Geology – the most prestigious journals in our field. This witnesses the high quality of your CAS-products.

The majority of the work started at CAS has not yet been published, and some of the ideas produces at CAS are still at a stage where the outcome is hard to predict.

The effects of putting together a group of internationally established scientists are never completely predictable. Synergies may arise by unexpected combinations of approaches, and analogies between problems that at first glance appear too different to mingle. On the other hand, scientists with obvious common interests may refrain from optimal interactions due to a certain competitiveness.

The CAS project represented perhaps the most active period in the cross-disciplinary Geology-Physics collaboration that’s has been going on since 1996. The CAS research group forms the core of a research centre called “Physics of Geological Processes”, directed by Jens Feder and Bjørn Jamtveit, that today competes in the finals for one of the Centres of Excellence (CoE) launched by the Norwegian research Council in 2002. We received extremely good reviews during the first CoE evaluation, partly based on the work carried out at CAS.

Regardless of a possible CoE our research will be continued in the Strategic University Program “Physics of Geological Processes” to be carried out in the period 2002–2006.