WASHINGTON: A strong relationship exists between global and local climate change and a mountain’s internal tectonic plate shifts and topographic changes, researchers have found.
Researchers led by geologist Eva Enkelmann from University of Cincinnati in US found that the way a mountain range moves and behaves topographically can also change and create its local climate by redirecting wind and precipitation.
The repercussions of these changes can in turn, accelerate the erosion and tectonic seismic activity of that mountain range. “There are two primary processes that result in the building and eroding of mountains and those processes are interacting,” said Enkelman.
Enkelmann noted that the northern part of the St Elias mountain range — located along the Pacific coastal region of North America — is dry. But the precipitation is very high in the southern area, resulting in more erosion and material coming off the southern flanks. As the climate change influences the erosion, that can produce a shift in the tectonics.
Enkelmann synthesised several different data sets to show how a rapid exhumation occurred in the central part of the mountain range over four to two million years ago. This feedback process between erosion and internal tectonic shifting resulted in a mass of material moving up toward the surface very rapidly.
