Guangsheng Zhuang

Louisiana State University | LSU · Department of Geology & Geophysics

Earth's climate transitioned from the greenhouse conditions of the Eocene to the icehouse of the Oligocene ∼34 million years ago. Global cooling was triggered by a decrease in atmospheric pCO2 and is associated with the first appearance of large, permanent ice sheets in Antarctica. The tectonic separation of the Antarctic at that time and the creat...

Paleoclimatic and environmental responses to the late Eocene warmhouse in the western interior of the United States areas are poorly understood. Understanding the paleoclimate scenarios we studied the latest Eocene Lagerstätte Florissant Formation (FF, 34.1 Ma, radiometrically dated of detrital sanidine) at Florissant, central Colorado, which conta...

Understanding the evolution of the South Asian monsoon during glacial-interglacial cycles is critical for understanding its control on ocean upwelling and primary productivity and oxygen deficiency in intermediate waters, i.e., the oxygen minimum zone, and predicting the long-term response of the Earth system to climate change. This study focuses o...

The processes that initiate and/or intensify the East Asian Summer Monsoon (EASM) are highly debated but are often attributed to the uplift of topography, especially the Tibetan Plateau (TP) and/or global climatic changes. The relationship between the uplift of TP and changes in EASM climate is unclear due to the paucity of paleoclimatic proxy reco...

For sedimentary archives to be used as a record of hinterland evolution, the factors affecting the archive must be known. In addition to tectonics, a number of factors, such as changes in climate and paleodrainage, as well as the degree of diagenesis, influence basin sediments. The Indus River delta-fan system of South-Central Asia records a histor...

The latest Eocene Lagerstätte Florissant Formation (FF, 34.1 Ma) at Clare’s Quarry, Teller County, Colorado, contains a diverse flora and fauna preserved in lacustrine facies. In the late Eocene, during the deposition of the FF, the climate was warm temperate to subtropical and deciduous broadleaved plants and exotic tall conifers were present. Thi...

A detailed uplift history of the Tibetan Plateau is essential for disentangling the proposed geodynamical models and assessing its impacts on climate and biodiversity. However, when and how the plateau formed remains highly controversial. Here, we present unusual geochemical indicators of marine signatures in the Cenozoic terrestrial strata of the...

Cretaceous‐Miocene sedimentary rocks in the Nepalese Lesser Himalaya provide an opportunity to decipher the timing of India‐Asia collision and unroofing history of the Himalayan orogen, which are significant for understanding the growth processes of the Himalayan‐Tibetan orogen. Our new data indicate that detrital zircon ages and whole‐rock Sr‐Nd i...

The long‐term evolution of the Tibetan Plateau significantly influenced Asian climate, nearby ocean physics and chemistry, and terrestrial biodiversity. This range of impacts has attracted research attention from a correspondingly broad range of disciplines, providing important new insights into prolonged and emerging debates concerning the Himalay...

Studies reveal that the sea-surface temperature (SST) of the Northern Hemisphere decreased at a smaller amplitude than that of the Southern Hemisphere during the Eocene–Oligocene transition (EOT). This interhemispheric temperature asymmetry has been associated with intensified Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) that may have driven...

Post-middle Miocene changes in climate and ecology in the northern Tibetan Plateau have been attributed to tectonic uplift and global climate change. However, the relative roles of tectonism and global climate change have been a long-standing debate. To untangle the complex influences of global climate change versus the tectonism on regional climat...

The Qaidam Basin in the core area of arid Inner Asia has been considered undergoing continuous aridification over the Cenozoic. However, the Qaidam Basin is marked with expanded lacustrine sedimentation during the Oligocene, which contrasts with the fluvial or deltaic facies stratigraphically below (Eocene) and above (Miocene-present). The Oligocen...

The widely distributed paleoclimate archives in Tajikistan, such as loess-paleosol sequences and the fluvial and lacustrine sedimentary rocks, are excellent materials for studying the aridification histories and mechanisms of the westerlies and the uplift of the Pamirs. The branched glycerol dialkyl glycerol tetraethers (brGDGTs)-based proxies have...

The Qaidam Basin marks a crucial boundary between the Westerlies and the Asian summer monsoons. Previous studies in the Qaidam Basin have advanced our knowledge of the paleoclimate over glacial to interglacial cycles. However, our understanding of the paleoclimatic sensitivity of the Qaidam Basin to the relative strength of these two climatic drivi...

The knowledge of provenance and paleoelevation of late Cretaceous‐Cenozoic terrestrial basins is crucial in discriminating different topography growth models for Tibetan Plateau. The Hoh Xil Basin is located in the north central Tibetan Plateau, and its thick sediments provide an excellent record for investigating the growth history of Tibetan Plat...

The Eocene-Oligocene (E-O) climate transition (ca. 34 Ma) marks the shift from “greenhouse” to “icehouse” climate conditions, which is characterized by global cooling and expansion of the Antarctic ice sheet. The paleoclimatic studies regarding the E-O transition (EOT) have triggered a lot of interests because this global cooling event was related...

C4-grasslands are known to have first expanded globally in the Late Miocene, and recent research has hinted at a second expansion phase during the Early Pliocene; however, the geographic extent of this second event and its driving force are debated. In this study, we present organic carbon-isotopic evidence from a high-resolution drillcore in North...

Plain Language Summary The Tibetan Plateau provides a superb example of studying the mountain building processes related to the continent‐continent collision and the impact of high topography on climate. However, our knowledge of the growth history of Tibetan Plateau is limited due to the scarcity of quantitative constraints on the area and elevati...

Two competing factors, the global cooling and the uplift of Tibetan Plateau, have been proposed to drive the central Asian aridification, but their relative role has seldom been discriminated in paleoclimate and paleoenvironment records. Here, we reconstruct a 14-million-year-long record of paleohydrology and paleoecology in the western Qaidam Basi...

The Hindu Kush–Kohistan–Karakoram region is critical to understanding the long-term accretion history of the south Asian margin pre- and post-India–Asia collision and the impact of these collisions on the development of high topography. However, knowledge about this region remains incomplete owing to sparse studies. Here, we present a study compris...

The early onset of deformation following the India-Asia collision, Neogene expanse of uplift, and complex systems that comprise strike-slip faults, thrust faults, and intermontane basins characterize the Cenozoic tectonism of Northern Tibetan Plateau and raise two prominent questions in orogenic geodynamics: 1) What mechanism(s) control(s) the tran...

The Asian monsoon has long been argued to be a product of the Himalaya-Tibetan Plateau, and simulation experiments have confirmed the key role of the Himalaya-Tibetan Plateau in transforming regional atmospheric and oceanic circulations. However, temporal constraints on the strengthening of the Asian monsoon inferred from foraminifer isotopic and f...

The Cenozoic terrestrial, intermontane Qaidam Basin on the northeastern edge of the Tibetan Plateau contains N 12 km of sedimentary rocks that potentially document the accommodation of India-Asia convergence and the growth of the plateau. The chronology remains incomplete, hindering cross-basin correlation between lithostratigraphic units and their...

The accommodation of India-Asia collision in the Northern Tibetan Plateau has been a dynamic and controversial topic for decades. One area of contention focuses on the timing and mode of strain partitioning between strike-slip motion along the >1,600 km long Altyn Tagh fault (ATF) and thrust faulting in the Qilian Shan fold-thrust belt. Here we pre...

Scientific drilling of the abyssal evaporites beneath the deepest parts of the Mediterranean basin gave rise to the idea that the Mediterranean sea completely evaporated at the end of the Messinian. Herein, we show, using new organic geochemical data, that those evaporites were deposited beneath a deep-water saline basin, not in a subaerial saltpan...

The Southern Alpsare an ideal locality for studying patterns of isotopic fractionation associated with orographic precipitation. We have evaluated whether altitudinal change is reflected in the stable hydrogen isotopic composition (δ2H) of stream water, plant stem water and leaf wax lipids (n-alkanes) from living plants and soils, as well as in-soi...

The growth of Tibetan Plateau is considered to have played a key role during the evolution of Asian climate. Our understanding of the relationship between the plateau growth and Asian climate changes is limited, however, due to the scarcity of well-dated sedimentary sequences that could provide parallel information of the evolution of elevation and...

To test previously suggested exhumation histories of the Gangdese Batholith in the central part of the Transhimalayan plutonic belt, we conducted paired apatite and zircon (U-Th)/He thermochronological investigations of the Yarlung Zangbo gorge in the central part of the batholith. Age-elevation relationships and multisystem thermochronometers show...

The relationship between central Asian aridification and the evolution of the Himalayan–Tibetan orogen remains elusive. New isotopic data from pedogenic and lacustrine carbonates sampled from well-dated Neogene strata (15.7–1.8Ma) in the northeastern Qaidam basin of the northern Tibetan Plateau identify a positive shift of ~2.5‰ in δ18O values from...

An integrated research of sedimentology, stratigraphy, and provenance analysis on eleven sedimentary sections from the Qaidam basin, Hexi Corridor, and Subei basin representing similar to 36 km Cenozoic strata provides a detailed record of the northern Tibetan Plateau growth since the early Eocene. Sections are divided into three groups based on ag...

The Altyn Tagh Fault (ATF) is a 1600 km lithospheric-scale strike-slip fault which delineates an abrupt topographic and rheologic boundary at the northern end of the Tibetan Plateau. With measured Cenozoic offset of 375 ± 25 km (Yue et al., 2003), the ATF plays a major role in accommodating strain from the Indo-Asian collision. GPS studies have dem...

The northern Tibetan Plateau, containing the intermontane Qaidam basin, sinistral strike-slip Altyn Tagh fault (ATF), Qilian Shan fold-thrust belt, and Hexi Corridor, plays a key role in accommodating the India-Eurasia convergence. However, the timing and deformation mode remain disputed. Here we present research results from the basin studies on t...

The Qaidam Basin preserves a sedimentary record that spans Jurassic to present. Recent deformation has exposed much of this stratigraphic sequence and the significant petroleum potential means that the rest has been well-characterized by reflection seismology. With this rich stratigraphic record, the Qaidam basin is key to understanding how this ma...

The northern Tibetan Plateau consists of the elevated areas from the Kunlun Shan toward the north. This region includes the Qaidam basin and Qilian Shan, and the major bounding structures are the Qilian Shan fault, Altyn Tagh fault (ATF), and Northern Altyn Tagh fault, although deformation occurs beyond these limits in the Tarim basin and the Hexi...

The Altyn Tagh Fault (ATF) plays a central role in accommodating strain related to the India-Asia collision. Previous work has shown 375 ± 50 km of Cenozoic sinistral offset on the ATF. However, questions regarding the history of slip transfer into the Qilian Shan remain unanswered. Two end-member models - a ``two-stage'' and a ``continuum'' model...

This study presents oxygen and carbon isotopic records from lacustrine, paleosol, alluvial, and fluvial carbonate sampled in thirteen Cenozoic sedimentary sections that span the northern margin of the Tibetan Plateau. Isotopic analyses of 1475 carbonate samples yield δ18O values that range from 13.1 to 38.9‰ (SMOW), and δ13C values range from − 11....

Oxygen isotopic data from 14 sections collected along the northern margin of Tibet show two distinct trends indicative of northward growth of the plateau in the Paleogene followed by basin isolation and growth of local mountain ranges in the Neogene. Our isotopic study encompass many of the large basins found north of Tibet including the Tarim, Qai...

Substantial debate centers on the spatial extent and slip history of the Altyn Tagh Fault (ATF) and the role that it plays in accommodating strain due to the India-Asia collision. Two models - a continuum thickening model and a two-stage evolution model - comprise end-member hypotheses for Altyn Tagh Fault evolution. The former posits that ATF term...

The Qaidam basin and Hexi Corridor, two major basins lying within and adjacent to the northern Tibetan Plateau margin, are separated by the Qilian Shan fold-thrust belt and bounded by the Altyn Tagh fault (ATF) to the northwest. Understanding the formation and evolution of these basins provides insight into the tectonic history of their bounding te...

DOI = 10.3126/hjs.v5i7.1309 Himalayan Journal of Sciences Vol.5(7) (Special Issue) 2008 p.121-122