About
564
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Introduction
I am a multidisciplinary sedimentary and tectonic geologist focusing on the evolution of Cenozoic Asia and the interactions between climate, tectonics, erosion and weathering with reference to the Tibetan Plateau, Himalayas and the history of the Asian monsoon. I have a special interest in the South China Sea and Arabian Sea.
Current institution
Additional affiliations
January 2019 - November 2022
University of Hong Kong
Position
- Professor
October 2004 - present
January 2016 - December 2019
Education
August 1987 - August 1990
October 1984 - June 1987
Publications
Publications (564)
Uplift and erosion of the Himalaya and Tibetan Plateau has resulted in deposition of some of the largest sedimentary masses on Earth. Chemical weathering of these materials has been invoked as a primary driver of long-term global cooling because weathering of silicate material consumes atmospheric CO2. We here combine geochemical data from scientif...
Available online xxxx Editor: A. Webb Keywords: provenance aneurysm erosion Himalaya syntaxis geochronology Rapid uplift and exhumation is hypothesized to occur within focused zones of orogenic syntaxes which may dominate sediment flux from a mountain belt. The Namche Barwa-Gyala Peri Massif (NBGPM) in the Himalayan Eastern syntaxis is an example o...
How well do deep-sea sedimentary archives track erosion in upland sources, driven by climatic change or tectonic forcing? Located on the western edge of the South Asian monsoon’s influence, the Indus River system is particularly sensitive to variations in monsoon rainfall and thus provides a unique opportunity to estimate the nature of sedimentary...
The East Asian monsoon plays an integral role in human society, yet its geological history and controlling processes are poorly understood. Using a general circulation model and geological data, we explore the drivers controlling the evolution of the monsoon system over the past 150 million years. In contrast to previous work, we find that the mons...
New bulk sediment Sr and Nd isotope data, coupled with U–Pb dating of detrital zircon grains from sediment cored by the International Ocean Discovery Program in the Arabian Sea, allow the reconstruction of erosion in the Indus catchment since ∼17 Ma. Increasing εNd values from 17 to 9.5 Ma imply relatively more erosion from the Karakoram and Kohist...
The debate concerning the long-term evolution of the East Asian summer monsoon (EASM) and its governing mechanisms persists, often attributed to either the uplift of the Tibetan Plateau or global temperature changes. This disagreement arises from the scarcity of comprehensive, high-resolution monsoon records. Utilizing continuous sedimentary record...
The consumption of atmospheric CO2 as a result of silicate weathering is a very important carbon sink process over geological time scales, serving as a significant mechanism for regulating global carbon cycling and climate. However, whether silicate weathering is a positive driving factor for climate change or a negative feedback to mitigate climat...
This book addresses the interplay between geodynamics, climate, and biodiversity, focusing on the India-Asia collision, the key abiotic parameter shaping the region's topography, climate, and ecosystems. Asia, with its unparalleled geological activity and rich biodiversity, is ideal for studying interactive processes of Earth System Science. Collis...
Most mélanges in exhumed subduction‐accretion complexes are polygenetic, recording significant information about the nature of geological processes during their formation. Here, we apply micro‐chemical analysis and illite K‐Ar dating to constrain the deformation mechanism and timing of the pervasively sheared scaly matrix in the accretionary comple...
Plain Language Summary
We carried out the first research documenting chemical weathering in northern New Guinea for 330 ka. The breakdown of pristine minerals is recognized as being important in regulating atmospheric CO 2 and thus controlling the global climate over a variety of timescales. We explore the role played by New Guinea in modulating an...
The False River area of the Mississippi River preserves a Holocene example of a meandering river point bar in a continental-scale system. We predict lithofacies quantitatively, using K-means cluster analysis from a nine-well data set that integrates well-log data (electrical conductivity (EC), corrected pressure and horizontal hydraulic permeabilit...
Under sustained global warming, Arctic climate is projected to become more responsive to changes in North Pacific meridional heat transport as a result of teleconnections between low and high latitudes, but the underlying mechanisms remain poorly understood. Here, we reconstruct subarctic humidity changes over the past 400 kyr to investigate the ro...
Measuring chemical weathering histories in submarine fan deposits is critical if the impact of orogenic erosion on atmospheric CO2 levels is to be understood, yet existing records are often noisy and hard to interpret. In this study, we selected mudstones from two International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) sites from the Indus submarine fan and c...
New marine records allow monsoon reconstructions showing summer rains strengthened after 55 Myr and 23 Myr and weakened after 12 Myr and 8 Myr. Monsoon strength is controlled by global temperatures, but also topography in the Himalaya-Tibet, Africa and Iran.
The Sunda Shelf in Southeast Asia is the Earth’s largest tropical shelf with a diverse geological history. New opportunities for Land-2-Sea drilling expeditions are explored, connecting Plio-Pleistocene sea-level fluctuations with tropical ecosystem development, hominin evolution and carbon-climate responses.
The investigation of triggers causing the onset and intensification of Northern Hemisphere Glaciation (NHG) during the late Pliocene is essential for understanding the global climate system, with important implications for projecting future climate changes. Despite their critical roles in the global climate system, influences of land-ocean interact...
East Asian winter monsoon (EAWM) activity has had profound effects on environmental change throughout East Asia and the western Pacific. Much attention has been paid to Quaternary EAWM evolution, while long-term EAWM fluctuation characteristics and drivers remain unclear, particularly during the late Miocene when marked global climate and Asian pal...
The evolution of arc‐continent collision between the Palawan microcontinental block and the Cagayan Ridge in the southeastern margin of the South China Sea (SCS) is vital to understand how this collision correlated with seafloor spreading of the SCS. To address the evolution of arc‐continent collision, we studied the biostratigraphy and provenance...
Scientific drilling provides extended records of continental environmental conditions during the Neogene in Asia and northern Australia. Spectral data allows reconstruction of the environment using abundances of hematite and goethite. Hematite formation is favoured by dry or seasonal conditions. Hemipelagic sites show the most regular records. Mons...
Arc-continent collision is a fundamental stage in the plate tectonic cycle that allows the continental crust to grow and can influence global climate through chemical weathering. Collision between Australia and the oceanic North Coast Range-New Britain Arc began in the Middle Miocene resulting in uplift of the modern New Guinea Highlands. The tempo...
How do tectonics and climate force surface processes and the evolution of biodiversity in Asia? This book examines some of the most biogeographically distinct and tectonically active areas on Earth today that straddle the highest mountains and spread across equatorial islands, offering insights into the complex processes driving their evolution.
Airborne mineral dust is sensitive to climatic changes, but its response to orbital forcing is still not fully understood. Here, we present a reconstruction of dust input to the Subarctic Pacific Ocean covering the past 190 kyr. The dust composition record is indicative of source moisture conditions, which were dominated by precessional variations....
Late Cenozoic changes in the intensity of the East Asian Summer Monsoon (EASM) are reconstructed using both terrestrial and marine proxy records; however, proxies from terrestrial (e.g., loess, pollen, and pedogenic isotopes) and marine environments (e.g., foraminifer assemblages and geochemistry) commonly display large discrepancies both in the di...
The Thar Desert is a major sediment depocenter located in southwestern Asia and bordering the Indus drainage system to its east. It is unclear where the sediment that built the desert is coming from, and when the desert experienced phases of construction. In particular, we seek to establish the role of the South Asian monsoon in the initial formati...
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...
Currently, the climatic implications associated with the Cenozoic tectonic history and growth mechanisms of the Tibetan Plateau lack consensus and remain controversial. This is due in part to chronological uncertainties and few paleoelevation records distributed in the central to northern Tibetan Plateau, which we address here with the development...
Tectonic subsidence on rifted, passive continental margins are largely controlled by patterns of extension and the nature of strain partitioning in the lithosphere. The Sunda Shelf, adjacent to the SW South China Sea, is characterized by deep basins linked to regional Cenozoic extension associated with propagating seafloor spreading caused by slab...
The tectonic setting of the southernmost part of the eastern margin of Laurentia during the Blountian tectophase (~472–452 Ma) of the Ordovician Taconic Orogeny remains unresolved. Tephras produced by explosive volcanism during this early phase of the orogeny are now K-bentonites, and in many locations, they are interbedded with mature to supermatu...
Anthropogenic impacts on weathering processes in the late Holocene have been widely demonstrated in recent studies, but the mechanism by which enhanced chemical weathering is linked to human activity remains unclear. In this study, we present a comprehensive reconstruction of sediment provenance, chemical weathering, vegetation type and evidence of...
Documenting the origins of megadiverse (sub)tropical aquatic ecosystems is an important goal for studies of evolution and ecology. Nonetheless, the geological and ecological establishment of the modern Yangtze River remains poorly understood. Here, we reconstruct the geographic and ecological history of an endemic clade of East Asian fishes based o...
Plain Language Summary
Sediments in the South China Sea (SCS) provide important records of past changes in the ocean circulation and atmospheric patterns in the Pacific Ocean. However, the interpretation of sedimentary archives from this region in terms of changes in the ocean currents or the climate‐driven sediment supply can be challenging becaus...
The Mississippi River provides an opportunity to examine models of sediment transport in large alluviated floodplain systems. We test the idea that sources of sandy sediment in such settings are invariable on timescales <104 y because of storage and recycling in the floodplains. To reconstruct the development of the Mississippi sediment load over t...
What processes control grain size and bed thickness in submarine canyon deposits? Erosive, shelf-cutting canyons contrast with accretionary basin-floor submarine fan accretionary channels because the former tightly constrain turbidity flows in deep channels. This study addresses such a deep-water depositional system in the Indus Submarine Canyon us...
The production, transport, and deposition of mineral dust exert major influences on climate change and Earth’s biogeochemical cycles. Furthermore, their imprint, as recorded in pelagic sediments, provides an avenue for determining past changes in terrestrial aridity and atmospheric circulation patterns in response to global climate change. Here, by...
Mantle xenoliths recovered during bulk testing of the diamondiferous lamproites of southern Arkansas indicate an extremely depleted ~20-km-thick layer within the subcontinental lithospheric mantle (SCLM) at depths of ~100-120 km. A compilation of crust and mantle xenolith ages from the lamproites reveals a North American tectonic affinity dating ba...
The International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) conducted a series of expeditions between 2013 and 2016 that were designed to address the development of monsoon climate systems in Asia and Australia. Significant progress was made in recovering Neogene sections spanning the region from the Arabian Sea to the Sea of Japan and southward to western Au...
The Pearl River drains the South China Block and delivers large amounts of sediments to the northern South China Sea, and its development can be closely linked to the regional paleoenvironmental changes. However, the evolutionary history of the Pearl River has been poorly understood, mainly because of the lack of continuous and high-resolution sedi...
Plain Language Summary
The Northern Hemisphere Westerly wind is a significant component of planetary‐scale atmospheric circulation and has a large impact on regional and global climate change. Although numerous modern observations and orbital time‐scale studies of the Westerly wind have been conducted, we still know little about its evolution on mi...
International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) conducted a series of expeditions between 2013 and 2016 that were designed to address the development of monsoon climate systems in Asia and Australia. Significant progress was made in recovering Neogene sections spanning the region from the Arabian Sea to the Japan Sea and southward to western Australia...
The 85°E Ridge is a prominent linear structure in the northeastern Indian Ocean. Its nature and origin are still controversial due to the coverage of thick Bengal Fan sediments. Here we present a newly collected 400-km-long 2-D seismic reflection profile which crosses the 85°E Ridge near 11°N and shows the basement morphology and internal structure...
Testing models that link climate and solid Earth tectonics in mountain belts requires independent erosional, structural and climatic histories. Two well preserved stratigraphic sections of the Himalayan foreland basin are exposed in NW India. The Jawalamukhi (13–5 Ma) and Joginder Nagar sections (21–13 Ma) are dated by magnetostratigraphy and span...
The deposits of large Asian rivers with unique drainage geometries have attracted considerable attention due to their explanatory power concerning tectonism, surface uplift and upstream drainage evolution. This study presents the first petrographic, heavy mineral, Nd and Sr isotope geochemistry, and detrital zircon geochronology results from the Ho...
We examined an International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) drilling core from Site U1501, located on the distal margin of the northern South China Sea (SCS) basin to unravel the sediment provenance evolution in the Paleogene and the evolution of river catchments during basin opening. We attempt to understand the major factors driving river develop...
Geological and geophysical studies suggested that the Indus River system was initiated shortly after the collision between the Indian and Eurasian Plates in Middle Eocene. The geology of the Indus drainage is largely shaped by the collision between the Indian Plate with mainland Eurasia, starting around 50 million years ago. The Indus Basin holds a...
Although there is increasing evidence for wet, monsoonal conditions in Southeast Asia during the late Eocene, it has not been clear when this environment became established. Cenozoic sedimentary sequences constrained by radio-metrically dated igneous rocks from the Jianchuan Basin in the southeast flank of Tibetan Plateau now provide a section whos...
The Indus Fan, located in the Arabian Sea, contains the bulk of the sediment eroded from the Western Himalaya and Karakoram. Scientific drilling in the Laxmi Basin by the International Ocean Discovery Program recovered a discontinuous erosional record for the Indus River drainage dating back to at least 9.8 Ma, and with a single sample from 15.6 Ma...
The evolution and resulting morphology of a contourite drift system in the SE Pacific oceanic basin is investigated in detail using seismic imaging and an age-calibrated borehole section. The Nazca Drift System covers an area of 204 500 km ² and stands above the abyssal basins of Peru and Chile. The drift is spread along the Nazca Ridge in water de...
The Yangtze River is the longest river in Asia, but its evolutionary history has long been debated. So far no robust biological evidences can be found to crack this mystery. Here we reconstruct spatiotemporal and diversification dynamics of endemic East Asian cyprinids based on a largest molecular phylogeny of Cyprinidae, including 1420 species, an...
Sediment transport through the Mississippi River affects the lives and economies of millions of people along its course, so that understanding the controls on this process are of scientific and societal importance. Detrital U‐Pb geochronology, supported by grain size and major element data, can be a robust tool for constraining sediment provenance...
The Lubok Antu Mélange is exposed along one of the most important tectonic lineaments, the Lupar Line in Sarawak, Borneo. However, the depositional age of the Lubok Antu Mélange is poorly known, and no provenance studies have been conducted so far. Here, we use geochemical, Nd isotopic and detrital zircon Usingle bondPb analyses of samples from the...
Cenozoic surface uplift of Tibetan Plateau has driven the birth and reorganization of large river systems in Asia. The development of the Yangtze River, closely linked to plateau uplift, has important implications for the regional tectonic‐geomorphology processes, but is still under debate. The key scientific question is whether the Upper Yangtze (...
The Cenozoic erosion history of the Himalaya-Karakoram, which is a function of tectonically driven uplift and monsoon climatic evolution in South Asia, remains elusive, especially prior to the Miocene. Here, we present a multiproxy geochemical and thermochronological analysis of the oldest samples available from the Arabian Sea, which we used to in...
The timing of subduction is a fundamental tectonic problem for tectonic models, yet there are few direct geological proxies for constraining it. However, the matrix of a tectonic mélange formed in a subduction-accretion setting archives the physical/chemical attributes at the time of deformation during the subduction-accretion process. Thus, the de...
The Indus Fan derives sediment from the western Himalaya and Karakoram. Sediment from International Ocean Discovery Program drill sites in the eastern part of the fan coupled with data from an industrial well near the river mouth allow the weathering history of the region since ca. 16 Ma to be reconstructed. Clay minerals, bulk sediment geochemistr...
The India‐Asia collision has been the object of vigorous debate for decades, with ages of the start ranging from Late Cretaceous to Oligocene. Sedimentary records preserved in both near‐field and far‐field settings provide critical evidence concerning the age and mechanism of the collision. Gonjo Basin, one of a series of fault‐controlled basins de...
The Himalayan and Tibetan highlands (mountains), with high rates of physical erosion, are extreme settings for earth surface processes, generating one of the largest recent terrigenous detritus and organic carbon discharges to the ocean. However, their significance with respect to the global carbon and climate cycles during the Quaternary is still...
Faults offsetting sedimentary strata can record changes in sedimentation driven by tectonic and climatic forcing. Fault kinematic analysis is effective at evaluating changes in sediment volumes at salt/shale-bearing passive margins where sediment loading drives faulting. We explore these processes along the northern Gulf of Mexico. Incremental thro...
The Yangtze River is the longest river in Asia, but its evolutionary history has long been debated, in particular the origin of the First Bend and formation of the Three Gorges. Diverse groups of endemic freshwater fishes have evolved in this river. Here we present the historical, spatiotemporal pattern of the endemic East Asian cyprinid clade base...
The Asian monsoon and associated river systems supply the water that sustains a large portion of humanity, and has enabled Asia to become home to some of the oldest and most productive farming systems on Earth. This book uses climate data and environmental models to provide a detailed review of variations in the Asian monsoon since the mid-Holocene...
The Asian monsoon and associated river systems supply the water that sustains a large portion of humanity, and has enabled Asia to become home to some of the oldest and most productive farming systems on Earth. This book uses climate data and environmental models to provide a detailed review of variations in the Asian monsoon since the mid-Holocene...
The Asian monsoon and associated river systems supply the water that sustains a large portion of humanity, and has enabled Asia to become home to some of the oldest and most productive farming systems on Earth. This book uses climate data and environmental models to provide a detailed review of variations in the Asian monsoon since the mid-Holocene...
The Asian monsoon and associated river systems supply the water that sustains a large portion of humanity, and has enabled Asia to become home to some of the oldest and most productive farming systems on Earth. This book uses climate data and environmental models to provide a detailed review of variations in the Asian monsoon since the mid-Holocene...
The Asian monsoon and associated river systems supply the water that sustains a large portion of humanity, and has enabled Asia to become home to some of the oldest and most productive farming systems on Earth. This book uses climate data and environmental models to provide a detailed review of variations in the Asian monsoon since the mid-Holocene...
The Asian monsoon and associated river systems supply the water that sustains a large portion of humanity, and has enabled Asia to become home to some of the oldest and most productive farming systems on Earth. This book uses climate data and environmental models to provide a detailed review of variations in the Asian monsoon since the mid-Holocene...
The Asian monsoon and associated river systems supply the water that sustains a large portion of humanity, and has enabled Asia to become home to some of the oldest and most productive farming systems on Earth. This book uses climate data and environmental models to provide a detailed review of variations in the Asian monsoon since the mid-Holocene...
The Asian monsoon and associated river systems supply the water that sustains a large portion of humanity, and has enabled Asia to become home to some of the oldest and most productive farming systems on Earth. This book uses climate data and environmental models to provide a detailed review of variations in the Asian monsoon since the mid-Holocene...
Early Ordovician collision of the Lough Nafooey Arc, part of the Baie Verte Oceanic Tract, with the passive continental margin of Laurentia, peaking at ca. 475 Ma in Scotland and Ireland, was followed by subduction polarity reversal. This study examined Upper Ordovician-Silurian sedimentary rocks from western Ireland to see if collision was followe...
The Ganges River, one of the largest rivers on Earth, is a typical monsoonal and flood-controlled system but has low inter-annual peak discharge variability. The seasonal discharge can reach 70000 m3 sec-1 during the wet season but maintains a low base flow of 500–3000 m3 sec-1 during the dry season. However, the constancy in peak discharge every y...
The eastern Himalayan syntaxis, where the Yarlung Tsangpo sharply bends, is one of the areas experiencing most rapid exhumation on Earth. The rapid exhumation is often regarded as the result of capture of the Yarlung Tsangpo by the Brahmaputra River. However, both the timing of integration of the Yarlung Tsangpo-Brahmaputra River and initiation of...
The First Bend on the Yangtze River (China), the point where the river ceases flowing toward the south and heads toward the northeast, has been one of the most strongly debated geomorphic features in Asia because it holds the key to understanding the history of the Yangtze River and is linked to the tectonically driven surface uplift of the southea...
We test the hypothesis of a major Paleogene river draining the SE Tibetan Plateau and the central modern Yangtze Basin that then flowed South to the South China Sea. We test this model using U-Pb dated detrital zircon grains preserved in Paleogene sedimentary rocks in northern Vietnam and SW China. We applied a series of statistical tests to compar...
Subduction erosion is a long-term, large-scale geological process that dominates the structural inventory of a large number of convergent margins. Along the Peruvian convergent margin, this process has controlled the structural deformation of the forearc as a consequence of spatio-temporal variations during the Cenozoic. However, the pace at which...
Climate and topography change the characteristics of the Asian monsoon over millions of years. These changes affect the region’s climate and topography, and the cycle continues.
Primary production on the Western Indus continental shelf has been linked to the large quantities of nutrients delivered to the shelf by the Indus River.
Multiple geochemical tracers and biomarker records, including stable isotopes (δ13C and δ15N), total organic carbon (TOC), total nitrogen (TN), molar
carbon/nitrogen (C/N) ratio, the branched and...
Recently, Pandey et al proposed relict subduction initiation occurred along a passive margin in the northwest Indian Ocean. Here, Clift et al question the evidence for subduction initiation, suggesting that simpler rifting-related processes can more simply explain the available data for the Laxmi Basin.
As a latest Pleistocene repository of Indus River sand at the entry point to the Himalayan foreland basin, the Thal dune field in northern Pakistan stores crucial information that can be used to reconstruct the erosional evolution of the Himalayan-Karakorum orogen and the changes in the foreland-basin landscape that took place between the Last Glac...
Climate–tectonic interactions in the eastern Arabian Sea - Volume 157 Special Issue - Peter D. Clift, Dhananjai K. Pandey, Denise K. Kulhanek
Reconstructing the provenance of siliciclastic marine sediment is important for understanding sediment pathways and constraining palaeoclimate and erosion records. However, physical fractionation of different size fractions can occur during sediment transport, potentially biasing records derived from bulk sediment. In this study, records of radioge...
We investigate the phased evolution and variation of the South Asian monsoon and resulting weathering intensity and physical erosion in the Himalaya–Karakoram Mountains since late Pliocene time ( c. 3.4 Ma) using a comprehensive approach. Neodymium and strontium isotopic compositions and single-grain zircon U–Pb age spectra reveal the sources of th...
The Asian monsoon is the dominant climatic phenomenon in Southeast Asia, responsible for most of the regional precipitation. As well as tectonics, climate is well recognized as a primary control on erosion and the transport of sediment to the ocean. Sediment records from the South China Sea show that strong monsoons are associated with intensified...
