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Research title Tectonics and topography: a study of mountain denudation in southern Spain. Summary of research Erosion in high relief, tectonically active mountain belts has recently been brought into sharp focus as a major research issue, not least as a result of the controls on climate change that have been attributed to uplift and erosion/weathering. The resurgence of interest in the evolution of mountain belts has been accompanied by: the development of a range of exciting new techniques for elucidating mountain belt erosion, including terrestrial cosmogenic nuclide (TCN) analysis and apatite U-Th/He thermochronology; and numerical modelling of the interaction between crustal mass transfers and the evolution of topography. These models assume that in rapidly uplifting mountain hillslope and summit areas sensitively respond to base level changes through mass-movement processes. My present research challenges this assumption and assesses the degree to which short-to-medium term erosion and topographic development are coupled in rapidly uplifting mountain belts. TCN and optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) analyses and numerical modelling enable the assessment of catchment response to uplift events, with particular focus on the rates and processes of transmission of the uplift 'signal' (i.e. base level change) through the drainage net. A key question addressed in this research is: To what extent changes in base-level are transmitted through small-to-medium sized catchments and into summit regions? The answer to this question is critical to our understanding of how mountains evolve. |
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