Tectonic History of the Western United States

GEOL 5690, Spring 2024

Meet: Wednesdays and Fridays 11:30-12:45, BESC 440E.

Instructor: Craig Jones, ESCI 440C, cjones@colorado.edu

Text: Turcotte and Schubert, Geodynamics, 2nd or 3rd edition.
      Baldridge, Geology of the American Southwest is optional
      Stüwe, Geodynamics of the Lithosphere: An Introduction can be helpful

News:

Syllabus (mostly updated for 2024)

 

Schedule (older agenda items on a separate page)

Friday, 4/19: Shatsky Conjugate, Alternative models. How do we know there was a Shatsky conjugate? How can we decide where it was? How do we determine its effect on the surface? What should alternative models predict? What options are there?

Wednesday, 4/24: Paleoelevation. What approaches work for getting ancient elevations? What are the assumptions? What are the weaknesses? Focus will be on "Nevadaplano"; consider the differences in interpretations of these two papers and why they do differ:

Friday, 4/26: Gravitational potential energy, Basin and Range extension and Core Complexes. What are the sources of stress necessary to drive deformation? How does lithospheric structure affect those stresses? What is a core complex, and how might they form? What is the relationship between Basin and Range extension and the evolution of magmatism?

Wednesday, 5/1: Term project presentations. Please send whatever PowerPoint/Keynote you intend to show prior to class so they can all be on one computer. Everybody gets 15 minutes, but aim for less so there can be some Q and A and discussion.

Homeworks:

Handouts: (subject to updating)


Final project 2021: Plateau Subduction and the Laramide Orogeny

Final Project 2016: Final Hildebrand analyses online here

Our set of points used to examine to test the hypothesis of Hildebrand.
The papers by Hildebrand we examined in 2016:

 

 


 


Please send mail to cjones@colorado.edu if you encounter any problems or have suggestions.

GEOL5690 home | C. H. Jones | CIRES | Dept. of Geological Sciences | Univ. of Colorado at Boulder

Last modified at April 26, 2024 5:38 PM