Collaborative Research: Exhumation of the Colorado Plateau - Spatial and Temporal Distribution and Implications for Landscape Evolution

多学科合作项目的研究人员正在研究科罗拉多高原和邻近的南落基山脉的第三纪发掘历史。这项工作的目标是了解科罗拉多高原地区岩石的热历史，以及这些岩石是如何达到近地表水平的。再加上对科罗拉多高原景观如何被侵蚀的简单计算，岩石的热历史被用来约束科罗拉多高原的地表隆起历史。该项目依赖于科罗拉多高原地区热和地质历史记录的岩石挖掘。热历史是通过两种技术重建的，这两种技术记录了岩石的低温（低于110摄氏度）冷却、裂变径迹退火和矿物（如磷灰石）中铀、钍和氦的相对丰度。该项目涉及建立一个岩石挖掘和侵蚀数据的地理信息系统数据库（与科学界共享）。这些数据用于初步的建模工作，以研究我们的数据对科罗拉多高原和落基山脉南部隆起历史的影响。这项研究提供的新产品可能用于科罗拉多高原国家公园的教育展示。

The investigators in multidisciplinary collaborative project are examining the Tertiary exhumation history of the Colorado Plateau and adjacent southern Rocky Mountains. The goals of this work are to understand the thermal history of rocks of the Colorado Plateau region, and how these rocks came to be at near-surface levels. Together with simple calculations of how the Colorado Plateau landscape has been eroded, the thermal history of the rocks is being used to constrain the surface uplift history of the Colorado Plateau. This project relies on rock exhumation recorded in the thermal and geologic history of the Colorado Plateau region. The thermal history is reconstructed from two techniques that record the low-temperature (less than 110 deg C) cooling of rocks, fission-track annealing and the relative abundance of uranium, thorium, and helium inside minerals such as apatite. The project involves creating a Geographic Information Systems database (to be shared with the scientific community) of the rock exhumation and erosion data. These data are used in a preliminary modeling effort to study the implications of our data for the uplift history of the Colorado Plateau and southern Rocky Mountains. This research is providing new products that may be used in educational displays at National Parks across the Colorado Plateau.