High topography has captivated the human imagination and embodied the spirit of adventure beginning with our earliest ancestors. The character of mountains reflect the complex interplay between the Earth’s internal deformation along with the climate and biota that sculpt the deforming surface over millions of years. Yet within these millions of years, individual and interconnected processes operate over timescales spanning more than 10 orders of magnitude and spatial scales from the micro to macro. Apart from observations collected by people over the timescales of civilizations, the rock record is our only means to understand how mountains evolve. While the physical character of rocks provide remarkable first order information regarding the evolution of the planet, ever more sophisticated geochemical approaches allow us to interrogate the processes operating at the Earth’s surface at various timescales. Using these geochemical tools we can identify when, for example, the Earth’s surface increased in elevation and link it back to processes deep within the Earth. Similarly, we can connect the dynamics of erosion over thousands of years as it propagates through rising mountain ranges as a wave of erosion to how sediment is delivered downstream to basins. This presentation will highlight some of these approaches as applied to understanding the evolution of the Andes mountains between 30°S and 35°S latitude, approximately near Santiago de Chile and Menodza, Argentina.
Presenter: Dr. Gregory Hoke
Gregory Hoke is an associate professor of Earth sciences at Syracuse University. Hoke is a geoscientist who applies a variety of approaches to constrain the history and rates at which the Earth’s surface topography evolves through time and space. His work is in and adjacent to mountains and involves the use of in-situ cosmogenic radionuclides, stable isotopes of carbonate and waters in modern and ancient settings, topographic analysis and field geology. Hoke has worked extensively in Argentina, Chile, SW China and, in recent years, has extended his research to the Northeastern USA with a particular focus on glacial erosion. During his year in residence at the University of Wrocław he will extend his interest in glacial erosion to Europe by working with Polish colleagues to quantifying the timing and magnitude of glacial erosion in the Tatra and Sudets mountains through the lens of cave networks. Prior to joining the faculty at Syracuse University in 2009, Hoke was a Alexander von Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellow at the Universität Potsdam, Germany and a US National Science Foundation International Research Fellowship Program postdoc at the Instituto Argention de Nivología, Glaciología y Ciencias Ambientales in Menodza, Argentina. He earned his doctoral degree in Geological Sciences from Cornell University and a bachelor of Science in Geological Oceanography at the University of Rhode Island. Hoke is a fellow of the Geological Society of America and an associate editor for the GSA journal Geosphere.