Linkage of climate and geodynamics in development of plateaux at collisional plate margins: marine contributions to an international study of the Central Anatolian Plateau.

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It is important that humankind better understand the Earth system, so that policy makers can develop suitable, long-term social and economic strategies to deal with various environmental issues, including global change. This is an interdisciplinary project to study the linkages between climate and solid Earth dynamics, in the evolution of plateaux in mountain belts. These are driven by the tectonics of colliding plates, but local climate modifies the rising surface through erosion, transport and deposition.  In turn, the evolving mountain belt may affect global climate.  Orogenic plateaux are high plains within mountain belts, which result in, and are modified by, local climatic variations (rain-shadows, for instance). Young orogenic plateaux, which preserve a rock record of their evolution, offer a special opportunity to enhance our understanding of the essential linkage between surface and deeper processes, and model them.  The Central Anatolian Plateau, in southern Turkey, lies above an active convergent plate margin, where the African and Anatolian plates meet.  Continental collision is just starting, and we hypothesize that the collision is responsible for the uplift of the Plateau.  This new project involves onland studies of the Plateau uplift, complemented by studies of corresponding subsidence in adjacent offshore basins, together with seismic surveys to determine crustal structure of the active plate margin, and geodynamic modeling integrating all the information.The Canadian team will play a pivotal role in the marine component of this research: a high-resolution seismic reflection survey of the Göksu delta, a major local sediment sink, in the eastern Mediterranean, in May 2008; and a wide-angle crustal seismic survey from the African plate to the Central Anatolian Plateau on the Anatolian plate, planned for August 2009.  We seek funding for the surveys (already scheduled by our partners) and the follow-up data processing, modelling and interpretation. Our requested contribution from NSERC will leverage over 6 times as much funding from our European partners.