Coupled climatic/tectonic forcing of European topography revealed through thermochronometry (Thermo-Europe)

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Onno Oncken, since 10/2009; Professorin Dr. Cornelia Spiegel
• Subject Area: Palaeontology
• Term: from 2008 to 2014
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 69178430

The topography of the Alpine belts of Europe is the consequence of recent tectonic activity and climatically-modulated erosional processes. Climate and tectonics are coupled in mountain belts through the ability to redistribute mass and the physical need to respond to such redistribution respectively. Known climatic changes in the last 10 Myr have impacted the erosional processes across Europe, leading to strongly increased erosion rates in many European mountain belts and, arguably, have contributed to major tectonic changes. Our scientific understanding of the nature of the coupling between climate and tectonics is in its infancy, but potentially it represents the fundamental driver for mountain topography. This project aims to test alternative mechanisms for the potential coupling of climate and tectonics at various scales across Europe; this will be achieved through improved documentation of the rates and distribution of erosion during the Neogene and through modeling the tectonic response to this signal of erosion. A key to discriminating between tectonic and climatic forcing of variations in denudation rates is to look for apparent synchronicity in erosion signal between different mountain ranges and to correlate these with well-dated global or regional climatic events. This proposal addresses the question of the forcing mechanism of Pliocene-Quaternary accelerated erosion in European Mountain belts by combining (a) acquisition of new thermochronologic data on denudation rates and seismic data on sediment-flux from selected key areas; (b) development of new methods to increase the resolution of the thermochronologic record; (c) development of quantitative interpretational techniques that permit us to extract information on relief development and transient exhumation rates and (d) investigation of the potentially coupled effect of climate-induced and tectonic variability in exhumation rates.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: France, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Switzerland
• Participating Persons: Dr. Maria-Laura Balestrieri; Professor Dr. Pieter van der Beek; Dr. Michael Cosca; Dr. Joaquim Juez-Larré; Dr. Piotr Krzywiec; Professor Dr. Sean Willett
• Ehemalige Antragstellerin: Dr. Charlotte Cederbom, until 9/2009