CSDMS 2016 annual meeting poster PhilipSchoettle-Greene
Lithologic and tectonic controls on the influence of exhuming paleo-relief in landscape evolution
Alison Duvall, University of Washington Seattle Washington, United States.
Abstract:
The susceptibility of a landscape to denudation is known to vary widely with lithology. In eroding landscapes, where exhumation brings a variety of bedrock types to the surface, this can play a first-order role in the development of drainage patterns. No more spectacularly is the influence of lithology on landscape evolution displayed than in regions of inverted relief. In these cases, indurated valley fill is 'inverted' by subsequent erosion of less competent ridges, leaving a landscape where former channel bottoms occupy significantly higher topography than currently active channels. We describe these features as the product of topographic inheritance. While inverted relief is observed on Earth as well as Mars, the mechanisms that promote relief inversion are only intuitively understood. We hypothesize that the ratio of erodability between preserved and active landscape lithologies, present-to-paleo drainage orientation, and fluvial incision rate interact, with varying levels of importance, to drive relief inversion. To explore this hypothesis, a series of numerical experiments are designed to exhume a buried landscape of preexisting topography. The erodablity of the buried landscape as well as the rate and style of uplift in the model domain will be varied systematically to determine the conditions that promote topographic inheritance in eroding landscapes.
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