Collaborative Research: Development of Extensional Systems in Regions of Hot, Thick Crust: Insight from Tibet

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This project will investigate how modern continental extensional systems and associated basins are developing in regions of hot, thick crust. Tibet is underlain by the thickest crust on Earth that is arguably flowing at mid-crustal levels, and is actively extending East-West at greater that one-third the total North-South convergence rate between India and Asia. Recent studies show that North-trending Tibetan normal faults and adjacent basins vary systematically in their characteristics as a function of extension magnitude, and may provide sequential snapshots of rift basin evolution during progressive extension. Nascent rifts are characterized by half-graben basins bounded by high-angle normal faults. In contrast, more evolved rifts are bounded by low-angle detachment faults characterized by basins undergoing incision with intrabasin drainage divides in areas of inferred maximum extension. The goal of this research is to test the hypothesis that Tibetan rifts initiate as high-angle normal faults and associated half-grabens that evolve into detachment faults active at uppermost crustal levels and above which rift basin fill is uplifted and eroded, in response to progressive tectonic unloading and isostatic rebound. This hypothesis, along with several alternatives, will be tested in this project along a well exposed in central Tibet by using geological and structural mapping, cosmogenic dating, basin analysis, and low-temperature thermochronology. The project is a multi-disciplinary and collaborative research effort between faculty and students at the University of Kansas, University of Arizona, University of Texas, Dalhousie University in Canada, and the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research in China.Project findings will have a major scientific impact by documenting in detail how modern extensional systems develop in regions of active orogenesis that are underlain by hot, thick crust. The results will allow testing of contrasting models for the development of metamorphic core-complexes and low-angle normal faults, and may shed new light on the role of mid-crustal flow in enhancing isostatic rebound during continental extension.