scholarly journals Late Cenozoic Denudation and Topographic Evolution History of the Lhasa River Drainage in Southern Tibetan Plateau: Insights From Inverse Thermal History Modeling

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dongxu Cai ◽  
Xianyan Wang ◽  
Guangwei Li ◽  
Wenbin Zhu ◽  
Huayu Lu

The interaction of surface erosion (e.g., fluvial incision) and tectonic uplift shapes the landform in the Tibetan Plateau. The Lhasa River flows toward the southwest across the central Gangdese Mountains in the southern Tibetan Plateau, characterized by a low-relief and high-elevation landscape. However, the evolution of low-relief topography and the establishment of the Lhasa River remain highly under debate. Here, we collected thermochronological ages reported in the Lhasa River drainage, using a 3D thermokinematic model to invert both late Cenozoic denudation and relief history of the Lhasa River drainage. Our results show that the Lhasa River drainage underwent four-phase denudation history, including two-stage rapid denudation at ∼25–16 Ma (with a rate of ∼0.42 km/Ma) and ∼16–12 Ma (with a rate of ∼0.72 km/Ma). In the latest Oligocene–early Miocene, uplift of the Gangdese Mountains triggered the rapid denudation and the formation of the current main drainage of the Lhasa River. In the middle Miocene, the second stage of the rapid denudation and the high relief were associated with intense incision of the Lhasa River, which is probably due to the enhanced Asian summer monsoon precipitation. This later rapid episode was consistent with the records of regional main drainage systems. After ∼12 Ma, the denudation rate decreases rapidly, and the relief of topography in the central Gangdese region was gradually subdued. This indicates that the fluvial erosion resulting from Asian monsoon precipitation increase significantly impacts on the topographic evolution in the central Gangdese region.

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jiekun He ◽  
Siliang Lin ◽  
Jiatang Li ◽  
Jiehua Yu ◽  
Haisheng Jiang

AbstractThe Tibetan Plateau (TP) and surrounding regions have one of the most complex biotas on Earth. However, the evolutionary history of these regions in deep time is poorly understood. Here, we quantify the temporal changes in beta dissimilarities among zoogeographical regions during the Cenozoic using 4,966 extant terrestrial vertebrates and 1,278 extinct mammal genera. We identify ten present-day zoogeographical regions and find that they underwent a striking change over time. Specifically, the fauna on the TP was close to the Oriental realm in deep time but became more similar to the Palearctic realms more recently. The present-day zoogeographical regions generally emerged during the Miocene/Pliocene boundary (ca. 5 Ma). These results indicate that geological events such as the Indo-Asian Collision, the TP uplift, and the aridification of the Asian interior underpinned the evolutionary history of the zoogeographical regions surrounding the TP over different time periods.


2013 ◽  
Vol 121 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-172 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jingen Dai ◽  
Chengshan Wang ◽  
Jeremy Hourigan ◽  
Zhijun Li ◽  
Guangsheng Zhuang

Author(s):  
Linlin KOU ◽  
Xiaopeng DONG ◽  
Zhenhong LI ◽  
Jiawei CUI ◽  
Zhaoying MA ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chihao Chen ◽  
Yan Bai ◽  
Xiaomin Fang ◽  
Haichao Guo ◽  
Weilin Zhang ◽  
...  

<p>As an important driver of global climate change during the Cenozoic, the uplift of the Tibetan Plateau (TP) has strongly influenced the origination and evolution of the Asian monsoon system, and therefore the aridification of central Asia. Over the last two decades, the application of stable isotope paleoaltimeters and the discoveries of mammal and plant fossils have greatly promoted the understanding of the uplift history of the TP. However, paleoaltitudinal reconstructions based on different paleoaltimeters have suggested differing outcomes and therefore remain controversial. Novel paleoaltimeters have therefore needed to be developed and applied to constrain the uplift history of the TP more accurately and effectively by comparing and verifying multi-proxies. Paleothermometers based on glyceryl dialkyl glycerol tetraethers (GDGTs) are widely used in terrestrial and ocean temperature reconstructions. In this study, GDGT-based paleothermometers were tentatively applied to the Gyirong Basin on the southern TP, and the Xining Basins on the northern TP, in an attempt to quantitatively reconstruct their paleoaltitudes.</p><p>Both soil and aquatic-typed branched GDGTs have been identified from Late Miocene to Mid-Pliocene (7.0-3.2 Ma) samples taken from the Gyirong Basin; their reconstructed paleotemperatures were 7.5±3.3°C and 14.2±4.5°C, respectively. The former temperature may represent the mean temperature of the terrestrial organic matter input area, while the latter may represent the lake surface temperature. The results would suggest that the lake surface of the Gyirong Basin during the Late Miocene to Mid-Pliocene was 2.5±0.8 km and that the surrounding mountains exceeded 3.6±0.6 km, implying that the central Himalayas underwent a rapid uplift of ~1.5 km after the Mid-Pliocene.</p><p>GDGT-based paleotemperature reconstructions using MBT'<sub>5ME</sub> values show that the Xining Basin dropped in temperature by ~10°C during the ~10.5-8 Ma period, exceeding that in sea surface temperatures and low-altitude terrestrial temperatures during these periods. By combining these results with contemporaneous tectonic and sedimentary records, we infer that these cooling events signaled the regional uplift with the amplitude of ~1 km of the Xining basins. Our results support that the TP was still growing and uplifting substantially since the Late Miocene, which may provide new evidence for understanding the growth, expansion and uplift patterns of the TP.</p>


2019 ◽  
Vol 250 ◽  
pp. 594-600 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bibai Du ◽  
Jiali Ge ◽  
Ruiqiang Yang ◽  
Xu Han ◽  
Hui Chen ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
Robert A. Spicer ◽  
Tao Su ◽  
Paul J. Valdes ◽  
Alexander Farnsworth ◽  
Fei-Xiang Wu ◽  
...  

AbstractThe Tibetan Plateau was built through a succession of Gondwanan terranes colliding with Asia during the Mesozoic. These accretions produced a complex Paleogene topography of several predominantly east–west trending mountain ranges separated by deep valleys. Despite this piecemeal assembly and resultant complex relief, Tibet has traditionally been thought of as a coherent entity rising as one unit. This has led to the widely used phrase ‘the uplift of the Tibetan Plateau’, which is a false concept borne of simplistic modelling and confounds understanding the complex interactions between topography climate and biodiversity. Here, using the rich palaeontological record of the Tibetan region, we review what is known about the past topography of the Tibetan region using a combination of quantitative isotope and fossil palaeoaltimetric proxies, and present a new synthesis of the orography of Tibet throughout the Paleogene. We show why ‘the uplift of the Tibetan Plateau’ never occurred, and quantify a new pattern of topographic and landscape evolution that contributed to the development of today’s extraordinary Asian biodiversity.


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