| Session Details | |
| Section | SE - Solid Earth Sciences |
| Session Title | Growth of the Eurasian Continent and Tibetan Plateau: Closure of Paleo- and Neotethyan Oceans and Paleoclimatological Inferences |
| Main Convener | Dr. Xixi Zhao (University of California Santa Cruz, United States) |
| Co-convener(s) | Dr. Chengshan Wang (China University of Geosciences (Beijing), China) Prof. Zhengxiang Li (Curtin University of Technology, Australia) |
| Session Description | The growth of the Eurasian continent and the formation of the spectacular Alpine-Himalayan mountain belt along its southern margin have been attributed to the closure of Tethyan oceans since the Paleozoic. As the Earth's largest mountain belt, the Himalayan-Tibetan Plateau is an excellent natural laboratory for studies of the interactions between tectonics and climate (because the Plateau causes large deviations in planetary scale atmospheric processes that lead to anomalous climate patterns), and other geological consequences. In this session we invite contributions from multidisciplinary studies in this large region (from the western Mediterranean region to eastern Asia and northern Australia), including new paleogeographic reconstructions, analysis of continent-continent collision, arc magmatism, back-arc evolution, subduction zone and slab evolution and the impacts of these tectonic couplings on global climate from the Paleozoic to the present. We are particularly interested in studies which integrate field, laboratory, and theoretical approaches to understanding the interactions between the growth of the Tibetan plateau and climate. Contributions that include structure and tectonics, metamorphic geology, petrology and geochemistry, paleomagnetism, geomorphology, isotopic studies, stratigraphy and sedimentology, paleoaltimetry, and numerical modeling are welcome. |