Coupling mantle convection (ASPECT) to lithosphere and surface processes to understand North American tectonics
Contributed by Alireza Bahadori and Jacqueline Austerman, Columbia University
Dramatic topographic extension, an unparalleled suite of data from field observations and EarthScope, and well-constrained plate boundary evolution make the western United States a world-class natural laboratory for studying the thermomechanical processes of extensional collapse. The present-day Basin and Range province of Southwestern North America (SWNA) is the product of this complete period of extension. The extensional period is generally recognized to consist of an early phase in latest Eocene-Oligocene, in which metamorphic core complexes formed through evolution of low-angle normal faults that eventually exhumed highly sheared middle-crustal rocks (Bahadori and Holt, 2019).
In a pair of studies we model mantle flow using ASPECT ... [full article]Check out all Research Highlights