Collaborative Research: Strain and Tectonics of the Tibetan Plateau and Himalayan Arc

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The Tibetan Plateau deforms over time much more than any other large piece of continental crust on earth. Unlike most tectonically active regions, the effects of plate motion there are not localized to a narrow boundary separating India and Asia, but are spread across thousands of kilometers, from the Himalayan foothills to Mongolia. Where this deformation occurs within the Plateau is still mostly unknown, as are the basic physical mechanisms driving it. The work supported by this funding intends to attack both of these mysteries by improving mathematical models of crustal deformation to include edge and surface effects hypothesized for the Himalayan boundary, and by making direct measurements of the velocities of remote parts of Tibet using GPS geodesy. Existing models of Tibetan dynamics have not yet addressed the development of the shape of the Himalayan arc. Existing maps of observed Tibetan surface velocities are still mostly blank. It is currently impossible to differentiate among competing hypotheses of how Tibet grows and moves based on predictions of surface motions or of geographic shapes.