Cenozoic sediments of the Tajik basin: sedimentology, provenance, and the tectonic record of the Pamir

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The western foreland of the Pamir, the Tajik basin, contains an up to 10 km thick continuous succession of pre- and syn-tectonic units, spanning the Early Cretaceous to the late Neogene; its sediments record the exhumation and the propagation of the thrust-fold systems of the Pamir and the Tien Shan. We investigated sections in the northern, central, and eastern part of the basin with a focus on the active basin margins. Our sedimentologic and provenance studies trace the timing of exhumation of both the Pamir and Tien Shan and the structural and sedimentologic/facies evolution; detailed studies, in particular also in the basin center, are necessary to bring the apparently disparate histories of different parts of the basin together. A further topic will be the provenance of syn-tectonic Neogene deposits, preserved in the Alai valley between the Main Pamir Thrust zone and the Tien Shan fold-thrust belt and in the intra-montane basins of the western Tien Shan. For the latter, we want to clarify whether they were part of the foreland basin of the Pamir or have to be considered as piggy-back basins of the Tien Shan thrust belt. As for the ongoing research within the Tajik basin, we will combine investigations of facies, sediment-geometries, and stacking patterns of syn-tectonic deposits, detailed provenance analysis, including detrital geo-thermochronology of the sediments.