Coire Glas: core through the Great Glen Fault! BGS Core Store Visit (Edinburgh)  

The Great Glen Fault Zone provides an exceptional natural laboratory to investigate how faults evolve, and how they interact with fluids and melts, which is critical to predicting both fault behaviour and resource potential. Recent ground investigations for the Coire Glas pumped-storage hydropower scheme have recovered previously unseen drill core from the heart of this major crustal-scale fault system. These cores preserve a remarkable record of faulting, reactivation, fluid flow, metasomatism and igneous intrusion, offering an unprecedented view into the shallow-crustal evolution of the Great Glen Fault.

This workshop presents an opportunity to examine these new cores from Loch Lochy and the underground exploratory underground tunnel. Together, we will explore what they reveal about the initiation, evolution and reactivation of continental fault systems, and consider how deformation, fluids and magmatism interact to shape the architecture, behaviour and resource potential of major crustal faults. The cores provide rare and tangible evidence from within a long-lived fault zone, helping us address a fundamental question: what controls the evolution of crustal fault systems through geological time?

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