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Collapse of a Coastal Mountain Belt and Climate Change in Southeast China
Collapse of a Coastal Mountain Belt and Climate Change in Southeast China
Left: Tectonic, topographic, and climatic evolution associated with the collapse of a coastal orogen.Top: Spatial variation in exhumation rates inverted from thermochronologic data. For the inland area, the change in exhumation rate is compared with the erosion response predicted by landscape evolution modeling following an increase in rainfall.
I collaborate with a research group to investigate the tectonic collapse of a Mesozoic coastal orogen in southeastern China and its influence on rock exhumation and climate. This multidisciplinary work combines field observations, microtectonic analysis, geochronology, offshore seismic-reflection interpretation, thermochronology-based exhumation-rate inversion, and landscape evolution modeling. Our results suggest that exhumation along the coastal region was primarily driven by tectonic processes, whereas exhumation farther inland was more strongly influenced by climate change associated with the evolving topography.
One-Dimensional Thermokinematic Modeling
One-Dimensional Thermokinematic Modeling
Check the Software page for HETA (with companion tools), a one-dimensional thermal modeling software that uses exhumation history to calculate transient temperature fields and thermochronologic ages for various dating systems.
Why am I developing a new code package?
In my past research, I have used and experimented with a variety of thermal and thermochronologic modeling tools, including:
Pecube — solves the 3D heat-transport equation in a crustal or lithospheric block undergoing uplift, erosion, and evolving surface topography. I have used Pecube-HUGG for large-scale inversion modeling and Pecube-D to incorporate sophisticated, balanced-cross-section-style kinematics.
GLIDE — a linear inversion method for inferring spatial and temporal variations in exhumation rates from thermochronometric data.
HeFTy — predicts thermochronologic ages from specified temperature–time (T–t) histories and can invert thermochronologic datasets to reconstruct the thermal histories of geological samples.
age2exhume — for estimating steady-state vertical exhumation rates from thermochronometric ages.
In recent years, I have increasingly used landscape evolution models (LEMs) to investigate interactions between tectonic and surface processes. This motivated me to develop a simple and flexible way to convert LEM-predicted erosion histories into thermochronologic age predictions, allowing landscape-evolution and tectonic models to be tested against thermochronometric datasets alongside other observations of landscape development.
Although several existing tools can address parts of this problem, I have not found a user-friendly package designed specifically for this workflow. Pecube, for example, is a powerful option for including topographic changes in thermokinematic modeling, but its three-dimensional, FORTRAN-based framework can be computationally demanding and has a steep learning curve.
In many applications, however, a full 3D thermal model may not be necessary. We are often interested in thermal histories and predicted thermochronologic ages at a few key locations or along a geological transect. For these problems, a simpler, more flexible one-dimensional thermal modeling framework can efficiently connect landscape-evolution predictions, erosion histories, thermal evolution, and thermochronologic observables.
Structural Analysis and Mechanical Stratigraphy (Currently inactive)
Structural Analysis and Mechanical Stratigraphy (Currently inactive)
An old airphoto with structural interpretation, Dillon area(The cover image of Northwest Geology, Volume 18, 1989)
The fold-and-thrust belt in southwestern Montana displays different deformation styles in different rock units during upper crustal shortening. The great exposure of bedrock at a site in the Dillon area provides an opportunity to investigate how the structures accommodate different deformation styles in different rock units and different structural positions. To do this, I conduct detailed geological mapping and intense data collection and construct 3D structural models. The fieldwork was conducted while I was teaching the geology field camp in several field seasons.
With my dissertation advisor, Dr. Michael Murphy, using the data and images I collected, we developed a virtual mapping project (with structural data analysis) for online teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic-affected summer field camp in 2020.
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