The Lamont Earth Science Colloquium presents:
Tectonically dead but geomorphically alive: rock diversity drives river network reorganizations that boost biodiversity
Dr. Pedro Val, Assistant Professor, Queens College.
For decades, the slow rates of erosion in tectonically inactive, non-mountainous landscapes have fueled the misconception that intraplate, low-relief settings have little geomorphic activity. However, as known for over a century, many intraplate landscapes contain evidence suggestive of ongoing, widespread drainage network rearrangement via river captures and drainage divide migration. Paradoxically, it is in the purported undynamic, slowly eroding landscapes in continent interiors that the highest freshwater and terrestrial biodiversity is observed. How can tectonically dead landscapes be so geomorphically alive and incredibly biodiverse? In this talk, I explore how the slow erosional exhumation of hard rocks can be the primary driver of systematic drainage network reorganizations in the absence of tectonic activity. The exhumation of variable rock types systematically reroutes rivers and provides the missing motor of vicariant and dispersal events needed to shuffle the aquatic biota and create highly biodiverse systems.
Host: Dr. Austin Chadwick, Postdoctoral Research Scientist, Ocean and Climate Physics, LDEO.
The Earth Science Colloquium Series, sponsored by Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and Columbia University Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences (DEES), provides a lively forum for discussing a wide variety of topics within the Earth sciences and related fields. Colloquia are attended by the full range of scientific and technical staff at LDEO. Colloquium attendance is required of all pre-orals DEES graduate students. The Colloquium Series supports the Lamont Seminar Diversity Initiative.
