Speakers Club - Seulgi Moon

Event Date: 

Monday, November 13, 2017 - 10:30am
Topographic stress controls on bedrock fractures, surface processes, and landscape evolution 
 
The interactions between tectonics, climate, and surface processes on Earth drive landscape evolution. Characterizing these interactions is central to understanding past and future landscape change.
In this talk, I show how tectonics and topography may influence the distribution of subsurface bedrock fractures and in turn influence surface processes
and landscape evolution. Applying a model of three- dimensional topographic stresses to three sites with different tectonic regimes in USA, we find a strong correspondence between modeled stress and observed seismic velocities and electric resistivity. This suggests that topographic stresses influence near-surface bedrock fractures, which in turn alter patterns of weathering, erodibility, and groundwater flow. By exploring the predictions of three-dimensional stress model, we illustrate how topographic stresses could influence landscape evolution by altering the rates and spatial heterogeneity of surface processes.