Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE140101710
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$381,620.00
Summary
Investigating the formation of the continents: Ontong Java Plateau as a modern day analogue. The formation of the continents has been obscured by billions of years of history. It has been proposed that the Ontong Java Plateau is a modern day analogue for the continents. The Ontong Java Plateau is a huge submerged volcanic edifice, half the size of Australia. This project will seismically image the interior of the Earth beneath the Ontong Java Plateau and use these images as constraints to develo ....Investigating the formation of the continents: Ontong Java Plateau as a modern day analogue. The formation of the continents has been obscured by billions of years of history. It has been proposed that the Ontong Java Plateau is a modern day analogue for the continents. The Ontong Java Plateau is a huge submerged volcanic edifice, half the size of Australia. This project will seismically image the interior of the Earth beneath the Ontong Java Plateau and use these images as constraints to develop a model for its origin and evolution. This work has implications for understanding the formation of the continents and the factors that have enabled their stability for billions of years. A better understanding of continent formation may benefit Australia by yielding insights into economic resources, plate tectonics and geohazards.Read moreRead less
Building Central Asia: Linking the Growth of Asia to its Exhumation. The consumption of the Tethys Ocean and the associated collision of Gondwana-derived terranes with Eurasia resulted in the uplift of the highest mountain belt on Earth: the Himalayas. However, stresses from this collision zone propagated far into the Eurasian interior by reactivating faults and creating mountain belts along these fault zones. This project aims to map and model how and when fault (re)activation occurred by integ ....Building Central Asia: Linking the Growth of Asia to its Exhumation. The consumption of the Tethys Ocean and the associated collision of Gondwana-derived terranes with Eurasia resulted in the uplift of the highest mountain belt on Earth: the Himalayas. However, stresses from this collision zone propagated far into the Eurasian interior by reactivating faults and creating mountain belts along these fault zones. This project aims to map and model how and when fault (re)activation occurred by integrating multi-method thermochronological and structural data on major Meso-Cenozoic Central Asian fault systems. The resulting time-integrated tectonic model will aid in the understanding of the India-Eurasia collision, the building of the mountainous Central Asian landscape and its influence on the Asian climate.Read moreRead less