Geodynamics and Growth of the Tibetan Plateau
The Tibetan Plateau is the largest orogenic plateau on Earth, and the high topography represents a natural laboratory to explore the interplay between climate and tectonics during mountain building. Our studies focus on the history of topographic change through time, tracking the exhumation history of mountain ranges; on the history of crustal thickening and deformation, reconstructing ancient fault behavior; and on the modern state of the crust, probing the rheology of the lithosphere as it responds to surface loading. Some of this work overlaps with our studies of active fault systems and in landscape evolution, but much of it is distinct, focused on the interplay of erosion and tectonics during plateau growth over the Cenozoic.