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The development of affordable digital technologies that allow the collection and analysis of georeferenced field data represents one of the most significant changes in field-based geoscientific study since the invention of the geological map. Digital methods make it easier to re-use pre-existing data (e.g. previous field data, geophysical survey, satellite images) during renewed phases of fieldwork. Increased spatial accuracy from satellite and laser positioning systems provides access to geostatistical and geospatial analyses that can inform hypothesis testing during fieldwork. High-resolution geomatic surveys, including laser scanning methods, allow 3D photorealistic outcrop images to be captured and interpreted using novel visualization and analysis methods. In addition, better data management on projects is possible using geospatially referenced databases that match agreed international data standards. Collectively, the new techniques allow 3D models of geological architectures to be constructed directly from field data in ways that are more robust compared with the abstract models constructed traditionally by geoscientists. This development will permit explicit information on uncertainty to be carried forward from field data to the final product. Current work is focused upon the development and implementation of a more streamlined digital workflow from the initial data acquisition stage to the final project output.

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The partitioning of deformation into wrench- and contraction-dominated deformation domains is a widely reported but poorly described phenomenon in ancient transpression zones. This paper documents spectacularly exposed examples of such partitioning from the Southern Uplands terrane in SE Scotland (Berwickshire), which was deformed during late Llandovery to Wenlock time. A well-exposed coastal section from Eyemouth to Burnmouth preserves a broadly homoclinal sequence in which a highly heterogeneous array of contemporaneous structures formed during regional triclinic transpression. The deformation involved components of NW–SE contraction with subvertical extension, top-to-the-SE thrusting and top-to-the-SW sinistral shear. In the northern third of the section studied these components are partitioned into a series of fault-bounded, metre- to kilometre-scale structural domains that contain geometrically and kinematically distinct assemblages of variably curvilinear folds, strike-slip detachments and locally transecting cleavages. The structures are all broadly contemporaneous and, in individual domains, record either non-coaxial contractional- or sinistral wrench-dominated strains. Similar highly heterogeneous, domainal structural patterns are likely to be found in other regions of oblique convergence in both ancient and modern settings.

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