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New GSA book studies the central Andes of Argentina and Northern Chile

January 15th, 2015

This new volume in The Geological Society of America's memoir series brings together results from a six-year, multidisciplinary study of the linkages among processes that formed the highest, widest part of the Andean Cordilleran orogenic belt in northern Argentina and Chile. The study was designed to test the idea that diverse processes operating in cordilleran-style orogenic belts may be linked in feedback and feed-forward relationships.

The central Andes provide an excellent place to study potential linkages among such processes. The region features a tectonically erosive forearc, protracted arc magmatism, a high-elevation hinterland plateau and strongly shortened retroarc thrust belt, and a Paleocene to recent foreland basin system. Surface geology records spatially complex shortening, extension, mafic to felsic magmatism, hinterland basin development, elevation change, and regional foreland basin migration.

Seismological and geodynamic studies demonstrate a complex, dynamic upper mantle marked by widespread foundering of dense lithosphere formed by magmatic and metamorphic processes beneath the hinterland. Diverse processes operating over the past 60 million years in the central Andes define a tectono-magmatic cycle with a periodicity of approx. 25 to 30 million years, providing a new framework for interpreting Cordilleran orogenic systems worldwide.

The chapters in the volume provide new data from the upper mantle to the surface, from the forearc to the active foreland basin, and employ a wide array of techniques and methods, including geophysics, petrology, geochronology and thermochronology, sedimentology, structural geology, geomorphology, paleoaltimetry, and geodynamic modeling. All four editors are from the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona, USA.

More information:
Individual copies of the volume may be purchased through The Geological Society of America's online store or by contacting GSA Sales and Service, gsaservice@geosociety.org.

Provided by Geological Society of America

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