Tectonics and climate in a low-latitude rift: rift-shoulder denudation and sedimentation processes in northern Lake Malawi

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Lake Malawi is an integral part of the East African Rift and contains an important low-latitude paleoclimate record reflecting the influence of climatic changes on erosion and rift sedimentation. An available network of high resolution seismic reflection profiles (3000 km length) provides an outstanding opportunity to characterize and quantify mass flux and sediment volumes in the northern Malawi Rift. Previous work has identified 100 kyr sedimentary cycles in the imaged seismic packages. A basin-wide analysis of this dataset with correlated seismic packages, and comparison with long-term denudation rates derived from thermochronology (U-Th/He; apatite fission track) will help assess the influence of multiple climate changes on erosion and sedimentation processes. In conjunction with geochronologic work on existing drill cores, and information to be obtained from future ICDP drilling in northern Lake Malawi the proposed analysis of seismic stratigraphic packages and low temperature thermochronology of rift-shoulder rocks will result in an improved model of sedimentation in an active rift. In addition, the expected results will determine the importance of climate vs. tectonic processes in rift sedimentation.