Minerals are formed in great diversity under Earth surface conditions, as skeletons, microbialites, speleothems, or authigenic cements, and they preserve a wealth of geochemical, biological, mineralogical, and isotopic information, providing valuable archives of past environmental conditions. Interpretion of these archives requires fundamental understanding of fluid-rock interaction processes, but also insights from the geological record.

In this session we welcome oral and poster presentations from a wide range of research of topics, including process-oriented studies in modern systems, the ancient rock record, experiments, computer simulations, and high-resolution microscopy and spectroscopy techniques. We intend to reach a wide community of researchers sharing the common goal of improving our understanding of the fundamental processes underlying mineral formation, which is essential to read our Earth’s geological archive.