Spatial variations of river incision rate in the northern Chinese Tian Shan range derived from late Quaternary fluvial terraces

Late Quaternary thrusting in the southern margin of the Chaiwopu Basin, northern Chinese Tian Shan foreland

“…In contrast, terrace T 4 is preserved in both the footwall and hanging wall of the BF, and the vertical offset of the BF recorded by this terrace is estimated to be about 20 m. Using the age of ~12 ka estimated by Wu et al. (2020), the average rate of vertical slip on the BF since formation of terrace T 4 is determined to be ~1.7 mm/year.…”

“…Until now, no numerical date on the abandonment age of terrace T 4 is available. Based on the similarity of the Urumqi River terrace T 4 with the 12‐ka terraces of the other piedmont rivers in the northern Tian Shan foreland, the abandonment age of the Urumqi River terrace T 4 has been estimated to be ~12 ka (Wu et al., 2020).…”

“…the offset in this work; Boulton & Stokes, 2018). (b) The T 4 formation age has been estimated from terrace correlation across the northern Chinese Tian Shan foreland (Wu et al., 2020), leading to uncertainty of terrace‐abandonment age. (c) The Urumqi River terrace T 1 is currently under farming, and thus the vertical offset of the BF constrained by this terrace is most likely to be underestimated.…”

GIS and DEM based analysis of incision and drainage reorganization of the Buyuan River basin in the upper Lancang-Mekong of China since the Late Pleistocene

“…The geomorphologic evolution of catchments is the basis for analyzing the changes in the surface environment. The incision rate and spatiotemporal variation of a river network are core and difficult points in the analysis of geomorphic characteristics given a long-timescale background, which is helpful to understand the historical evolution of a basin and the sediment-contributing area (Demoulin et al, 2017;Wu et al, 2020). The advancement of geochronological techniques has also made it possible to measure the formation ages of river terraces and long-term erosion rates (Guo et al, 2012;Hu et al, 2016;Zhang et al, 2018).…”

“…In recent years, there have been breakthroughs in low-temperature thermochronology, typified by apatite and zircon dating, which have been made, and they have been used in the analysis of plateau residual geomorphology and inversion of paleo-topography (Reiners et al, 2006;Wang et al, 2018). Using these dating methods to determine the age of sediments on landforms such as river terraces, alluvial-flood fans, and fault cliffs, we could reconstruct the formation and evolution history and quantify the erosion rate of landforms (Wu et al, 2020). However, basins in areas with an intense orogenic belt and humid climate have active erosion characteristics in which river valleys are mostly V-shaped and terrace sediments are rarely preserved; thus, the quality and collection process of sediment samples can be adversely affected.…”