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✸ Tectonic and Geomorphic Drivers to Global Biodiversity

國際鏈結

High biodiversity is closely related to tectonic activity through well-understood processes of habitat creation through mountain building, topographic modification and topographic impacts on climate. However, tectonic processes and accompanying geomorphic surface processes can also lead to an increase in diversification rates through processes of habitat fragmentation. Surface uplift and surface deformation occur through tectonic processes such as faulting and crustal thickening and changes in the Earth’s surface are modified through geomorphic and climatic processes. Surface change is time dependent with complex, non-linear responses that result in complex space-time patterns of habitat creation, fragmentation and recombination. Fragmentation leads to speciation and recombination leads to an increase in diversity. Prof. Sean Willett explores these concepts with a series of examples of specific tectono-geomorphic scenarios, documented with geologic and biologic data and quantified through newly-developed numerical models of coupled tectonics, landscape evolution and biological clade evolution and dispersion. Examples include mountain-building through convergent orogenic wedge formation (Taiwan, Italy), rifting and the formation of rift escarpments (Madagascar), and strike-slip tectonics (Hengduan Mts, China).

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