The volume and interplay of mass-transport (MTD) and turbidite-system deposits varies on different continental margins depending on local and external controls such as active-margin or passive-margin tectonic setting and climatic and/or sea-level change. Erosion and breaching of local grabens at the shelf edge of the southern Bering Sea produce giant, gullied canyons and MTD sheets that dominat...

A study using multiple techniques provided insight into tectonic influences on ground water systems; the results can help to understand ground water systems in the tectonically active western United States and other parts of the world. Ground water in the San Bernardino Valley (Arizona, United States and Sonora, Mexico) is the main source of water for domestic use, cattle ranching (the primary ...

Continental biodiversity gradients result not only from ecological processes, but also from evolutionary and geohistorical processes involving biotic turnover in landscape and climatic history over millions of years. Here, we investigate the evolutionary and historical contributions to the gradient of increasing species richness with topographic complexity. We analysed a dataset of 418 fossil r...

We use Quaternary stratigraphy to reconstruct landscape evolution and measure tectonic deformation of the Olympic Mountains section of the Pacifi c Northwest Coast Range. An important motivation for understanding orogenesis here, and throughout the Coast Range, is the concern about the relationship of active deformation to seismic hazards associated with the Cascadia subduction zone. There is a...

The ongoing collision between the Indian plate and the Eurasian plate brings up N-S crustal shortening and thickening of the Tibet Plateau, but its dynamic mechanisms remain controversial yet. As one of the most tectonically active regions of the world, South-Eastern Tibet (SET) has been greatly paid attention to by many geoscientists. Here we present the latest three-dimensional GPS velocity f...

The explosion in GIS usage in marine disciplines such as active tectonics has revolutionised our ability to visualise, analyse, and interpret seafloor environments using multiple datasets and a much more “holistic” view of geologic/geophysical data than previously available. Driven by the growing capabilities of desktop workstations, we can now realistically expect to display, merge, and fly th...

The last decade has witnessed a resurrection of historical decadal geodetic rates provide a reasonable proxy for the long-term rates of plate motions (Donnellan et al., 1993; concepts and controversies concerning the evolution of landscapes in active tectonic regimes. New insights into Abdrakhmatov et al., 1996). If true, geodetic measurements provide an accurate snapshot of the tectonic forcin...

In the mid‐1980s, advances in understanding the mechanics of the fold‐and‐thrust belts that flank many collisional mountain ranges set the stage for a fundamental change in our appreciation of the role of erosion in the tectonic evolution of mountain ranges. A combination of sandbox experiments, analytical treatments of stress state and field observations showed that fold‐and‐thrust belts form ...

a r t i c l e i n f o Plate tectonics is a self-organizing global system driven by the negative buoyancy of the thermal boundary layer resulting in subduction. Although the signature of plate tectonics is recognized with some confidence in the Phanerozoic geological record of the continents, evidence for plate tectonics becomes less certain further back in time. To improve our understanding of ...

Introduction: Planar deformation features (PDFs) in quartz are diagnostic impact evidence. Using light microscopy, it is often impossible to distinguish between PDFs and tectonic deformation lamellae. [1] showed that PDFs can be imaged using a cathodoluminescence (CL) detector in a scanning electron microscope (SEM) and that in SEM-CL images PDFs can be distinguished from tectonic microfracture...