ESCI 555. Seminar on interplays between mountain building, climate, and global carbon cycling
Spring, 2015
Instructors: Albarede, Blichert-Toft, Dasgupta, Gonnermann, Lee, Lenardic, Levander, Morgan, Niu, Oncken, Yeung, Yokoyama, Nittrouer, Masiello, Gordon, Dickens
MONDAY: 12-2 PM, Geology 100
This course will meet once a week for two hours to discuss the interplays between tectonics, specifically mountain building, with climate and the global carbon cycle. We will discuss the different tectonic and geodynamic processes that drive mountain building and surface uplift, such as subduction, continent collisions, and magmatism. We will also discuss how uplift influences climate, erosion, weathering and sedimentation, and how climate, in turn, influences uplift. We will interrogate various geologic archives to evaluate whether major long-term climatic events correlate with observed geologic events, such as enhanced mountain building, sedimentary deposition, and changes in biogeochemical cycling. The goal of this seminar is to bring together expertise from vastly different fields to address an inherently interdisciplinary problem.
In the first hour of each session, a faculty or graduate student/post-doct will provide a general overview of a particular topic and lead the discussions. One or two papers will be discussed in the second hour with the aim of ending with a series of important questions to follow up on. Students will be expected to follow up on the discussed topics and present a synthesis at the end of the course. This synthesis should identify key questions for future research and provide a roadmap for how these questions can be addressed or answered. Each student team will consistent of 2 students and one faculty mentor. The two students should come from different disciplines, e.g., seismologist and geochemist, in order to take advantage of the interdisciplinary setting.
Discussions on REDDIT
We have set up a Reddit account for ALL the faculty and ONLY students who signed up on the paper today. Visit http://www.reddit.com/r/RiceESCI555/ to use the forum. Bookmark this page, and use it to access the forum, not the overall reddit homepage. Your username is first initial (lowercase), full last name (lowercase), underscore, ESCI (e.g. amoodie_ESCI). You can change the password in the settings if you want to. If you have two initials (e.g. Cin-Ty) we used both initials, and we used full names whenever we knew them (e.g. Gerald Dickens).
26 January – Overview of Mountains and climate (Cin-Ty Lee)
Required reading - click here for presentation
Raymo and Ruddiman, 1992, Tectonic forcing of late Cenozoic climate, Nature 359:117-122.
Supplemental reading
2 February – Kinematics of mountain building, mass fluxes, tectonics, erosion (ONNO ONCKEN)
Required reading - click here for presentation
Whipple, KX (2009)The influence of climate on the tectonic evolution of mountain belts. NATURE GEOSCIENCE, Volume: 2, 2: 97-104, DOI: 10.1038/ngeo413
Strecker, MR;Alonso, RN; Bookhagen, B; Carrapa, B; Hilley, GE; Sobel, ER; Trauth, MH (2007) Tectonics and climate of the southern central Andes. Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences 35: 747-787; DOI: 10.1146/annurev.earth.35.031306.140158
Supplemenral reading:
9 February – Paleo-altimetry: prospects and pitfalls (LAURENCE YEUNG)
Required:
Rowley and Garzione, 2007, Stable-isotope based paleoaltimetry, AREPS 35:463-508
Supplemental:
Garzione et al. 2008, Rise of the Andes, Science 320:1304-1307.
McElwain 2004, Climate-independent paleoaltimetry using stomatal density in fossil leaves as a proxy for CO2 partial pressure. Geology 32:1017-1020
Sahagian 2002, Analysis of Vesicular Basalts and Lava Emplacement Processes for application as a Paleobarometer/Paleoaltimeter, J. Geology 110: 671-685
16 February – Deep structure of continents and mountains (ALAN LEVANDER, FENGLIN NIU)
readings
23 February – Glacial Buzz saw (JOHN ANDERSON)
9 March – Origin of melts of orogenic processes (Cin-Ty Lee)
16 March – Exhumation, paleoclimate (Yusuke Yokoyama)
23 March – Global volatile cycling (e.g., carbon), metamorphism, volcanism (RAJDEEP DASGUPTA)
30 March - Thermochronology (Francis Albarede)
Reiners and Brandon, 2006, Using thermochronology to understand orogenic erosion, AREPS 34:419-466
6 April – Free-form discussions (Julia Morgan moderator)
Students should self-organize and come prepared to informally discuss some of the past lectures, highlighting what they think were some of the key points and laying out a list of outstandi36:531-567ng questions. Students should work things out on the white-board, i.e., no need for powerpoints. Julia Morgan will moderate.
13 April – Magma emplacement (Helge Gonnermann)
Kohn, M. J., 2014, Himalayan metamorphism and its tectonic implications, AREPS 42:381-419.
20 April – Student presentations