Workshop on coupling of tectonic and surface processes across spatio-temporal scales

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The discovery of feedbacks between geomorphic and tectonic processes has revolutionized the understanding of the mechanics of mountain building and of the interactions between landscapes and climate. While the basics are established, the details of coupling remain debated. Separating the effects of climate and erosion from the effect of tectonics in the geological record remains a challenge. One approach to study these interactions are computer models that couple surface and tectonic processes in order to quantify the effects of a wide range of geologic and geomorphic parameters. This allows testing hypotheses derived from field observations and to develop new surface process-tectonics hypotheses. This project supports a workshop that gathers leading U.S. and international geoscientists who use and develop long-term tectonic and landscape evolution models to discuss numerical techniques that have the potential of revolutionizing the understanding of the interactions between surface processes and tectonics, as well as solve some of the most difficult technical challenges for developing models that require coupling over highly disparate spatial and temporal scales. The workshop advances desired societal outcomes by participation of women and underrepresented minorities and development of a diverse, globally competitive STEM workforce through engagement of early career scientists, post-doctoral scholars, and students in the workshop.This project supports the participation of U.S. and international scientists in a workshop, which will be held in 2018 at the University of Texas at Austin. The first goal of the workshop is to work to develop the next generation of coupled surface processes and long-term tectonic models to explore key questions linking tectonics, climate, and landscape evolution. This will require defining the numerical techniques used by the two communities and identifying the challenges in coupling across different temporal and spatial scales. The second goal is to strengthen the U.S. long-term tectonics modeling community and build new links/collaborations between the long-term tectonics community at NSF-supported Computational Infrastructure for Geodynamics and the surface processes community at NSF-supported Community Surface Dynamics Modeling System. Bringing together the two communities will do more than just facilitate code development; each community can help the other with the science by bringing new perspective to existing questions and ideas. The workshop participants will discuss specific, immediate questions for surface process and lithospheric deformation codes, including: (1) the role of topography and topographic stresses; (2) physically based erosion laws rather than diffusion based; (3) Inclusion of the seismic cycle in tectonic models; (4) inclusion of the seismic cycle in landscape evolution models; (5) the importance of 3D heterogeneity in material properties in both geodynamic and geomorphologic modelling; and (6) incorporation of atmosphere as a third component to models.