From depth to surface: how deep-earth processes and active tectonics shape the landscape in Pamir and Hindu Kush

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Silvia Crosetto ◽  
Sabrina Metzger ◽  
Dirk Scherler ◽  
Onno Oncken
Keyword(s):  
Active Faults ◽  
Indian Plate ◽  
Mountain Range ◽  
Eurasian Plate ◽  
North West ◽  
Continental Scale ◽  
The North ◽  
Lateral Extrusion ◽  
Hindu Kush ◽  
Thrust System

<p>The Pamir and Hindu Kush are located at the western tip of the India-Asia collision zone. Approximately a third of the northward motion of India’s western syntax is mostly accommodated by continental-scale underthrusting of the Indian plate beneath Asia. On its way northwards the arcuate, convex Pamir mountain range acts as a rigid indenter penetrating the weaker Eurasian plate, while lateral extrusion occurs to the west in the Tajik Depression.</p><p>Intense present-day shallow seismicity indicates active deformation along the northern and north-western semi-arid margin of the Pamir, where over the last century several M>6 and three M>7 crustal earthquakes, including a recent M6.4 event in 2016, were recorded. Earthquakes are distributed in the proximity of three main fault systems: the Pamir thrust system to the north, and the Darvaz fault and Vakhsh thrust system to the north-west. The pronounced topographic expression of these lithospheric faults is associated to a deeply incised landscape, which was profoundly shaped by past widespread glaciations. The transient evolution of the landscape following deglaciation is observed in the dynamic river network, characterised by intense fluvial incision and changes in the fluvial connectivity of the drainage system.</p><p>At depth, recent seismic tomography studies suggest delamination, stretching and tearing of the Asian slab beneath SW Pamir, and slab break-off underneath Hindu Kush. Slab break-off episodes are known to result in stress surges in the overlying lithosphere, potentially causing deformation and uplift.</p><p>In this complex system characterised by an important interplay between tectonics, climate and surface processes, we use qualitative and quantitative analyses of the topography and of the drainage systems evolution, inclusive of numerical tools, in order to define what is –and has been- the role played by the main lithospheric active faults of this area. In addition, we aim at identifying how landscape and surface dynamics respond, temporally and spatially, to processes, such as slab tearing/break-off, occurring at depth.</p>

Colliding Continents

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mike Searle
Keyword(s):  
Indian Plate ◽  
Mountain Range ◽  
Polar Regions ◽  
Geological Evidence ◽  
North West ◽  
Ice Cap ◽  
The North ◽  
West Himalaya ◽  
Tectonically Active ◽  
The Himalaya

The Himalaya is the greatest mountain range on Earth: the highest, longest, youngest, the most tectonically active, and the most spectacular of all. Unimaginable geological forces created these spectacular peaks. Indeed, the crash of the Indian plate into Asia is the biggest known collision in geological history, giving birth to the Himalaya and Karakoram, one of the most remote and savage places on Earth. In this beautifully illustrated book, featuring spectacular color photographs throughout, one of the most experienced field geologists of our time presents a rich account of the geological forces that were involved in creating these monumental ranges. Over three decades, Mike Searle has transformed our understanding of this vast region. To gather his vital geological evidence, he has had to deploy his superb skills as a mountaineer, spending weeks at time in remote and dangerous locations. Searle weaves his own first-hand tales of discovery with an engaging explanation of the processes that formed these impressive peaks. His narrative roughly follows his career, from his early studies in the north west Himalaya of Ladakh, Zanskar and Kashmir, through several expeditions to the Karakoram ranges (including climbs on K2, Masherbrum, and the Trango Towers, and the crossing of Snow Lake, the world's largest ice cap outside polar regions), to his later explorations around Everest, Makalu, Sikkim and in Tibet and South East Asia. The book offers a fascinating first-hand account of a major geologist at work-the arduous labor, the eureka moments, and the days of sheer beauty, such as his trek to Kathmandu, over seven days through magnificent rhododendron forests ablaze in pinks, reds and white and through patches of bamboo jungle with hanging mosses. Filled with satellite images, aerial views, and the author's own photographs of expeditions, Colliding Continents offers a vivid account of the origins and present state of the greatest mountain range on Earth.

scholarly journals Before the Celts: Cosmology, Landscape and Folklore in Neolithic Northwest Iberia

2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-45
Author(s):  
Fabio Silva
Keyword(s):  
Iberian Peninsula ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Mountain Range ◽  
The West ◽  
North West ◽  
The North ◽  
Celtic Studies ◽  
The Bronze Age ◽  
Northwest Iberia

This paper applies a combined landscape and skyscape archaeology methodology to the study of megalithic passage graves in the North-west of the Iberian Peninsula, in an attempt to glimpse the cosmology of these Neolithic Iberians. The reconstructed narrative is found to be supported also by a toponym for a local mountain range and associated folklore, providing an interesting methodology that might be applied in future Celtic studies. The paper uses this data to comment on the ‘Celticization from the West’ hypothesis that posits Celticism originated in the European Atlantic façade during the Bronze Age. If this is the case, then the Megalithic phenomenon that was widespread along the Atlantic façade would have immediately preceded the first Celts.

The Making of the Himalaya, Karakoram, and Tibetan Plateau

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mike Searle
Keyword(s):  
Tibetan Plateau ◽  
Plate Boundary ◽  
Indian Plate ◽  
North West ◽  
Geological Interpretation ◽  
Mountain Ranges ◽  
The Road ◽  
The North ◽  
On The Road ◽  
The Himalaya

My quest to figure out how the great mountain ranges of Asia, the Himalaya, Karakoram, and Tibetan Plateau were formed has thus far lasted over thirty years from my first glimpse of those wonderful snowy mountains of the Kulu Himalaya in India, peering out of that swaying Indian bus on the road to Manali. It has taken me on a journey from the Hindu Kush and Pamir Ranges along the North-West Frontier of Pakistan with Afghanistan through the Karakoram and along the Himalaya across India, Nepal, Sikkim, and Bhutan and, of course, the great high plateau of Tibet. During the latter decade I have extended these studies eastwards throughout South East Asia and followed the Indian plate boundary all the way east to the Andaman Islands, Sumatra, and Java in Indonesia. There were, of course, numerous geologists who had ventured into the great ranges over the previous hundred years or more and whose findings are scattered throughout the archives of the Survey of India. These were largely descriptive and provided invaluable ground-truth for the surge in models that were proposed to explain the Himalaya and Tibet. When I first started working in the Himalaya there were very few field constraints and only a handful of pioneering geologists had actually made any geological maps. The notable few included Rashid Khan Tahirkheli in Kohistan, D. N. Wadia in parts of the Indian Himalaya, Ardito Desio in the Karakoram, Augusto Gansser in India and Bhutan, Pierre Bordet in Makalu, Michel Colchen, Patrick LeFort, and Arnaud Pêcher in central Nepal. Maps are the starting point for any geological interpretation and mapping should always remain the most important building block for geology. I was extremely lucky that about the time I started working in the Himalaya enormous advances in almost all aspects of geology were happening at a rapid pace. It was the perfect time to start a large project trying to work out all the various geological processes that were in play in forming the great mountain ranges of Asia. Satellite technology suddenly opened up a whole new picture of the Earth from the early Landsat images to the new Google Earth images.

Seismicity in the North-West Frontier Province at the Indian-Eurasian Plate Convergence

2009 ◽  
Vol 80 (4) ◽  
pp. 599-608 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. K. S. Thingbaijam ◽  
P. Chingtham ◽  
S. K. Nath
Keyword(s):  
Eurasian Plate ◽  
North West ◽  
Plate Convergence ◽  
The North ◽  
North West Frontier Province

North-West Frontier: Kohistan, Hindu Kush, Pamirs

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mike Searle
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
British India ◽  
The West ◽  
North West ◽  
Border Regions ◽  
The North ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
North West Frontier Province ◽  
Hindu Kush ◽  
Tribal Areas

The Hindu Kush Mountains run along the Afghan border with the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan. Following the First Anglo-Afghan war of 1839– 42 the British government in Simla decided that the North-West Frontier of British India had to have an accurate delineation. Sir Mortimer Durand mapped the border between what is now Pakistan and Afghanistan in 1893 and this frontier is known as the Durand Line. Unfortunately it is a political frontier and one that splits the Pathan or Pushtun-speaking lands into two, with the North-West Frontier Province and Waziristan in Pakistan to the east and the Afghan provinces of Kunar, Nangahar, Khost, Paktiya, and Kandahar to the west. The border regions north of Baluchistan in Quetta and Waziristan are strong tribal areas and ones that have never come under the direct rule of the Pakistani government. Warlords run their drug and arms businesses from well-fortified mud-walled hilltop fortresses. During the period that Lord Curzon was Viceroy of India from 1899 to 1905 the entire border regions of British India were mapped out along the Karakoram, Kashmir, Ladakh, and south Tibetan Ranges. During Partition, in 1947, once again an artificial border was established separating mostly Muslim Pakistan from India. Lord Mountbatten, the last Viceroy, gave Sir Cyril Radcliffe the invidious task of delineating the border in haste to avoid a civil war that would surely have come, and on 17 August 1947 Pakistan inherited all the territory between the Durand Line and the new Indian frontier, the Radcliffe Line. In the north, the disputed Kashmir region still remained unresolved and the northern boundary of Pakistan ran north to the main watershed along the Hindu Kush, Hindu Raj, and Karakoram Ranges. To the west, Afghanistan was a completely artificial country created by the amalgamation of the Pathans of the east, Hazaras of the central region, the Uzbeks in the Mazar-i-Sharif area, and the Tadjiks of the Panjshir Valley along the border with Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province. The British lost three wars trying to invade this mountainous land between 1839 and 1919, and the Soviet Union which occupied Afghanistan for ten years from 1979 also withdrew across the Oxus River in failure in February 1989.

Late Labradorian metamorphism and anorthosite–granitoid intrusion, Cape Caribou River allochthon, Grenville Province, Labrador: evidence from U–Pb geochronology

1995 ◽  
Vol 32 (9) ◽  
pp. 1411-1425 ◽  
Author(s):  
François Bussy ◽  
Thomas E. Krogh ◽  
Richard J. Wardle
Keyword(s):  
Hanging Wall ◽  
Granulite Facies ◽  
Grenville Province ◽  
Mafic Dykes ◽  
North West ◽  
The North ◽  
Form Part ◽  
Thrust System ◽  
Granitoid Gneisses ◽  
New Generation

In the Cape Caribou River allochthon (CCRA), metaigneous and gneissic units occur as a shallowly plunging synform in the hanging wall of the Grand Lake thrust system (GLTS), a Grenvillian structure that forms the boundary between the Mealy Mountains and Groswater Bay terranes. The layered rocks of the CCRA are cut by a stockwork of monzonite dykes related to the Dome Mountain suite and by metadiabase–amphibolite dykes that probably form part of the ca. 1380 Ma Mealy swarm. The mafic dykes appear to postdate much of the development of subhorizontal metamorphic layering within the lower parts of the CCRA. The uppermost (least metamorphosed) units of the CCRA, the North West River anorthosite–metagabbro and the Dome Mountain monzonite suite, have been dated at 1625 ± 6 and 1626 ± 2 Ma, respectively. An amphibolite unit that concordantly underlies the anorthosite–metagabbro and is intruded discordantly by monzonite dykes has given metamorphic ages of 1660 ± 3 and 1631 ± 2 Ma. Granitoid gneisses that form the lowest level of the CCRA have given a migmatization age of 1622 ± 6 Ma. The effects of Grenvillian metamorphism become apparent in the lower levels of the allochthon where gneisses, amphibolite, and mafic dykes have given new generation zircon ages of 1008 ± 2, 1012 ± 3, and 1011 ± 3 Ma, respectively. A posttectonic pegmatite has also given zircon and monazite ages of [Formula: see text] and 1013 ± 3 Ma, respectively. Although these results indicate new growth of Grenvillian zircon, this process was generally not accompanied by penetrative deformation or melting. Thus, the formation of gneissic fabrics and the overall layered nature of the lower CCRA are a result primarily of Labradorian (1660–1620 Ma) tectonism and intrusion, and probably reflect early movement on an ancestral GLTS. Grenvillian heating and metamorphism (up to granulite facies) was strongly concentrated towards the base of the CCRA and probably occurred during northwestward thrusting of the allochthon over the Groswater Bay terrane.

scholarly journals Modern displacement of active faults in South-Yakutian coal-bearing depression on the GPS data

2019 ◽  
pp. 63-71
Author(s):  
V. S. Imaev ◽  
L. P. Imaeva ◽  
S. V. Аshurkov ◽  
N. N. Grib ◽  
I. I. Kolodeznikov
Keyword(s):  
Kinematic Model ◽  
Active Faults ◽  
Surface Displacement ◽  
Relative Displacement ◽  
Eurasian Plate ◽  
The North ◽  
Southern Yakutia ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The City ◽  
Gps Observations

For a quantitative assessment of the current horizontal velocity of the surface displacement of the crust in southern Yakutia in recent years, was organized the first and only points of permanent GPS observations in the city of Neryungri (NRG) and the city of Chulman (CHL3). Both points of observation are located within the southern margin of the Eurasian plate, near the system of active structures separating it from the Amur plate. To estimate the relative displacement, the period of joint operation of these two GPS points was chosen, namely from June 29, 2015 to December 1, 2016. The rate of displacement of the point in Neryungri, calculated for a 5-year period (from 27.10.2011 to 01.10.2016), was 21.83±0.73 mm/year in the East-West direction and 12.26±0.25 mm/year in the North-South direction in the international reference basis ITRF2014. The obtained values differ slightly from the theoretical values of the velocity of the Eurasian lithospheric plate at the specified point. The difference of the measured velocities with velocities according to the known kinematic model of the Eurasian plate obtained in this paper is |0.5| mm/year for the Eastern component and |1.0| mm/year for the Northern one and corresponds to the assessment of other authors [Kreemer et al., 2014]. To improve the accuracy of determining the speed of horizontal displacements of the earth's crust at the station CHL3, it is necessary to continue measurements synchronous with the station NRG2.

Beyond the North West Frontier: Travels in the Hindu Kush and the Karakorams

1990 ◽  
Vol 110 (1) ◽  
pp. 170
Author(s):  
James R. Russell ◽  
Maureen Lines
Keyword(s):  
North West ◽  
The North ◽  
Hindu Kush

scholarly journals Modern displacement of active faults in South-Yakutian coal-bearing depression on the GPS data

2019 ◽  
pp. 63-71
Author(s):  
V. S. Imaev ◽  
L. P. Imaeva ◽  
S. V. Аshurkov ◽  
N. N. Grib ◽  
I. I. Kolodeznikov
Keyword(s):  
Kinematic Model ◽  
Active Faults ◽  
Surface Displacement ◽  
Relative Displacement ◽  
Eurasian Plate ◽  
The North ◽  
Southern Yakutia ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The City ◽  
Gps Observations

For a quantitative assessment of the current horizontal velocity of the surface displacement of the crust in southern Yakutia in recent years, was organized the first and only points of permanent GPS observations in the city of Neryungri (NRG) and the city of Chulman (CHL3). Both points of observation are located within the southern margin of the Eurasian plate, near the system of active structures separating it from the Amur plate. To estimate the relative displacement, the period of joint operation of these two GPS points was chosen, namely from June 29, 2015 to December 1, 2016. The rate of displacement of the point in Neryungri, calculated for a 5-year period (from 27.10.2011 to 01.10.2016), was 21.83±0.73 mm/year in the East-West direction and 12.26±0.25 mm/year in the North-South direction in the international reference basis ITRF2014. The obtained values differ slightly from the theoretical values of the velocity of the Eurasian lithospheric plate at the specified point. The difference of the measured velocities with velocities according to the known kinematic model of the Eurasian plate obtained in this paper is |0.5| mm/year for the Eastern component and |1.0| mm/year for the Northern one and corresponds to the assessment of other authors [Kreemer et al., 2014]. To improve the accuracy of determining the speed of horizontal displacements of the earth's crust at the station CHL3, it is necessary to continue measurements synchronous with the station NRG2.

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