Peter Clift

Pinxian Wang

Wolfgang Kuhnt

Professor Peter Clift

Dennis E. Hayes

Published by the American Geophysical Union as part of the Geophysical Monograph Series, Volume 149. The study of the complex interactions between continents and oceans has become a leading area for 21st century earth cience. In this volume, continent—ocean interactions in tectonics, arc-continent collision, sedimentology, and climatic volution within the East Asian Marginal Seas take precedence. Links between oceanic and continental climate, the sedimentology of coastal and shelf areas, and the links between deformation of continental and oceanic lithosphere are also discussed. As an introduction to the science presented throughout the volume, Wang discusses many of the possible interactions between the tectonic evolution of Asia and both regional and global climate. He speculates that uplift of central Asia in the Pliocene may have triggered the formation of many of the major rivers that drain north through Siberia into the Arctic Ocean. He also argues that it is the delivery of this fresh water that allows the formation of sea ice in that area and triggered the start of Northern Hemispheric glaciation. This may be one of the most dramatic ways in which Asia has shaped the Earth's climate and represents an alternative to the other competing models that have previously emphasized the role of oceanic gateway closure in Central America. Moreover, his proposal for major uplift of at least part of Tibet and Mongolia as late as the Pliocene, based on the history of drainage evolution in Siberia, supports recent data from the southern Tarim Basin and from the Qilian Shan and Qaidam and Jiuxi Basins in northeast Tibet that indicate surface uplift at that time. Constraining the timing and patterns of Tibetan surface uplift is crucial to testing competing models for strain accommodation in Asia following India—Asia collision.

Continent-Ocean Interactions Within East Asian Marginal Seas

Qianyu Li

Pinxian Wang and Qianyu Li The South China Sea (SCS) (Fig. 1. 1) offers a special attraction for Earth scientists world-wide because of its location and its well-preserved hemipelagic sediments. As the largest one of the marginal seas separating Asia from the Paci?c, the largest continent from the largest ocean, the SCS functions as a focal point in land-sea int- actions of the Earth system. Climatically, the SCS is located between the Western Paci?c Warm Pool, the centre of global heating at the sea level, and the Tibetan Plateau, the centre of heating at an altitude of 5,000m. Geomorphologically, the SCS lies to the east of the highest peak on earth, Zhumulangma or Everest in the Himalayas (8,848m elevation) and to the west of the deepest trench in the ocean, Philippine Trench (10,497m water depth) (Wang P. 2004). Biogeographically, the SCS belongs to the so-called “East Indies Triangle” where modern marine and terrestrial biodiversity reaches a global maximum (Briggs 1999). Among the major marginal sea basins from the west Paci?c, the SCS presents some of the best conditions for accumulating complete paleoclimatic records in its hemipelagic deposits. These records are favorable for high-resolution pa- oceanographic studies because of high sedimentation rates and good carbonate preservation. It may not be merely a coincidence that two cores from the southern 14 SCS were among the ?rst several cores in the world ocean used by AMS C dating for high-resolution stratigraphy (Andree et al. 1986; Broecker et al. 1988).

Pinxian Wang

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