Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Late Quaternary Tectonics, Incision, And Landscape Evolution Of The Calchaquí River Catchment, Eastern Cordillera, Nw Argentina, James A. Mccarthy, Lindsay M. Schoenbohm, Paul R. Bierman, Dylan Rood, Alan J. Hidy

College of Arts and Sciences Faculty Publications

Unraveling the relative impacts of climate, tectonics, and lithology on landscape evolution is complicated by the temporal and spatial scale over which observations are made. We use soil and desert pavement classification, longitudinal river profiles, 10Be-derived catchment mean modern and paleo-erosion rates, and vertical incision rates to test whether, if we restrict our analyses to a spatial scale over which climate is relatively invariant, tectonic and lithologic factors will dominate the late Quaternary landscape evolution of the Calchaquí River Catchment, NW Argentina. We find that the spatial distribution of erosion rates, normalized channel steepness indices, and concavity indices reflect active …