The Interplay of
Collisional Tectonics and Late Cenozoic Glacial Climate in Alaska and the
northeastern Pacific Ocean
A Continental Dynamics/NSF and JOI/USSSP Sponsored
Workshop
4-5
May, 2003 University of Texas at Austin
Final
Workshop Report and Science Plan (Hi-Res, 24 MB, pdf)
Final
Workshop Report and Science Plan (Low-Res, 8 MB, pdf)
Science Plan Executive Summary
Only (1.5 MB, pdf)
Purpose: To develop a comprehensive terrestrial and marine science plan for studying the linkages between late Neogene collisional tectonics of the Yakutat block and Late Cenozoic climate in Alaska and the northeastern Pacific Ocean. This plan hopes to foster synergistic collaboration between ocean drilling and continental dynamics in this exciting natural laboratory for the coming decade. The two day workshop will consists of a brief number of keynote presentations, thematic poster sessions, and development of integrated terrestrial, marine, and modeling experiments amongst focused subgroups. These experiments will form the basis of future Integrated Ocean Drilling, Continental Dynamics, and core program proposals.
Targeted participants: Observationally-based terrestrial and marine researchers interested in the using the southeastern Alaska region (i.e., coastal mountains, continental margin, slope, Gulf of Alaska abyssal plain (Fig. 1) as an in situ natural laboratory to study tectonic-climatic interactions in a tectonically active glacial environment and to exploit the extremely high-resolution late Neogene-Quaternary marine record of north Pacific/sub-Arctic climate change. Analytical researchers interested in developing well-constrained geodynamic models for crustal and lithospheric deformation, exhumation, erosion, and the linkages between these processes. Scientists representing the fields of tectonics and geodynamic modeling, terrestrial and marine observational geophysics, GPS-based geodesy, glaciology, marine geology and glaciomarine sedimentation, micropaleontology, palynology, paleomagnetics, paleoclimatology and paleoceanography should consider applying. Participants will be chosen from this announcement. Selected applicants will be provided with full or partial support of their costs for air travel, accommodation, and meals. International participation is encouraged but total attendance is limited to ~35 persons. Post-docs and graduate students are encouraged to apply.
Rationale: Southern Alaska is an exceptional natural laboratory for
studying a range of geologic problems, including the links between orogenic
processes and continental accretion, landscape modification by glacial
processes, and continental margin sedimentation. Geologic processes
operate at rapid rates along the southern Alaska margin, which allows
scientists to concurrently collect data on tectonic deformation, uplift,
erosion, and sedimentation and develop comprehensive geodynamic models that
connect these diverse processes. The active processes in southeast Alaska
are comparable to those studied in the Himalayan orogeny and include extremely high
sediment yields, active faults beneath mountains and mountain glaciers, and
orogeny coinciding with extensive glacial cover. An important advantage
of Alaska over the Himalayas is proximity of the highest coastal mountain range
on earth next to an energetic ocean with essentially no intervening basins to
trap sediment. Tectonic signals are therefore quickly recorded in
offshore areas with little modification resulting from long transport in rivers
or temporary storage in intervening sedimentary basins.
A primary goal of scientific ocean drilling in the 21st
century is to distinguish and quantify cause and effect relationships between
tectonics and climate, particularly in areas of rapid sedimentation where the
potential resolution of events is greatest. One clear way to evaluate the
relationship between tectonic uplift and climate is to measure the resulting
changes in continental margin strata. Increases in terrigenous
accumulation rates, driven by increased topographic relief and erosion, can be
directly tied to a chronostratigraphy and to the proxy indicators of climate
and unroofing history contained in the complete marginal strata. Rapid
sedimentation throughout the past 5 m.y. in southern Alaska has produced an
unexplored but potentially extremely high-resolution (cm/yr; meters/kyr)
sedimentary record of sub-Arctic Pacific environmental change over the range of
time scales of interest to IODP: tectonic (longer than about 0.5 m.y.), orbital
(20 kyr to 400 kyr), oceanic (hundreds to a few thousand years), and
seasonal-to-centennial time scales.
The jointly funded JOI/USSSP and Continental Dynamics/NSF
workshop in Austin Texas, is co-convened by Sean Gulick and John Jaeger with a
steering committee including Terry Pavlis (U. New Orleans), Ross Powell (N.
Illinois U.), Jeff Freymueller (U. Alaska), John Armentrout (Cascade
Stratigraphics), George Plafker (USGS), and Peter Koons (U. Maine). Our
host is the Bureau of Economic Geology on Pickle Research Campus, University of
Texas at Austin..
Itinerary/Map to Pickle Research Campus
LIST OF PARTICIPANTS and POSTER ABSTRACTS
AIRPORT-HOTEL SHUTTLES
Austin SuperShuttle