Title EUROCORES Project: Coupled climatictectonic forcing of European topography revealed through th

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Title EUROCORES Project Coupled
climatic/tectonic forcing of European topography
revealed through thermochronometry
Thermo-Europe
Maria-Laura Balestrieri, Max Zattin and Marco
Malusa (Pisa, Bologna, Milano, Italy) Cornelia
Spiegel and Joachim Kuhleman (Bremen, Tübingen,
Germany) Mike Cosca (Lausanne,
Switzerland) Charlotte Cederbom and Onno Oncken
(Potsdam, Germany) Peter van der Beek and
Matthias Bernet (Grenoble, France) Sean Willett
and Rainer Wieler (Zürich, Switzerland) Paul
Andriessen and Joaquim Juez-Larré (Amsterdam,
Netherlands) Piotr Krzywiec (Warsawa,
Poland) Luis Barbero (Cadiz, Spain) Hugh
Sinclair (Edinburgh, U.K.) Ed Sobel (Potsdam,
Germany) Ulrich Glasmacher (Mainz, Germany).
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Thermo-Europe aims and objectives

• acquisition of new thermochronologic data on
  denudation rates and seismic data on
  sediment-flux from selected key areas
• development of new methods to increase the
  resolution of the thermochronologic record
• development of quantitative interpretational
  techniques that permit us to extract information
  on relief development and transient exhumation
  rates
• investigation of the potentially coupled effect
  of climate-induced and tectonic variability in
  exhumation rates.

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Thermo-Europe questions

• Can we document and quantify variations in
  erosion rates in, and/or sediment flux from,
  mountain belts through time and can we link these
  two measurements? What resolution can we achieve
  in the establishment of a record of erosion rates
  through time?
• Can we establish the timing of these variations
  with sufficient temporal and spatial resolution
  to enable correlation between different study
  areas?
• Can we use this information to discriminate
  climatic and tectonic forcing on the topographic
  evolution of the region?
• Can we reveal changes in topography due to
  changing rates and processes of erosion (e.g.,
  increased relief due to valley carving)?
• Can we document and model the tectonic response
  to changing erosion rates and topography, and can
  we establish couplings in the system?

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Thermo-Europe techniques

• Numerical modelling of thermochronologic
  age-elevation profiles
• Forward and inverse modelling of dense
  thermochronologic datasets
• Multiple thermochronometric analysis (e.g.,
  apatite fission-track, zircon and apatite
  (U-Th)/He)
• Apatite 4He/3He thermochronometry
• Detrital thermochronology on well-dated
  Mio-Pliocene sediments
• Combining detrital thermochronology with
  quantifications of sediment flux
• Numerical and analog models.

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Thermo-Europe target areas
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Thermo-Europe deliverables

• Key new data and compilations of existing data
  on the history of denudation rates and relief
  development in European mountain belts
• A suite of high profile publications that
  provide a step-change in the communities
  understanding of climate, tectonics and
  topography.
• Development of quantitative modelling-based
  interpretive tools for thermochronologic datasets
  (age-elevation profiles, detrital data), testing
  and validation of these through shared use on
  distinct datasets in order to make available
  standardised toolkits
• Formation of a European infrastructure and
  expertise for high-resolution low-temperature
  thermochronometry aimed at high-resolution
  analysis for the recent past (last 10 Myr).

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Thermo-Europe collaborations (1)
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Thermo-Europe collaborations (2)
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Thermo-Europe milestones (technique development)