Project Grant 2218920

This three-year, $298,432 National Science Foundation project grant supports collaborative research on tectonic escape mechanisms in the Alaskan Cordillera. Principal investigators from the University of Alaska Fairbanks will study how plate tectonics causes continental fragments to detach and migrate long distances, shaping mountainous terrain in western North America over the past 100 million years. They will unravel the geologic evolution and uplift history of the Ahklun Mountains to test if magmatism and uplifting fluctuated with changing amounts of tectonic escape over the last 70 million years. As part of the NSF Geosciences program's mission to expand earth science knowledge, the research aims to determine timing and drivers of magmatism, rock exhumation, and fault offset in the Ahklun Mountains. It will also engage first-generation college students from Alaska and South Dakota to support the program's broader impacts goal. Findings will advance understanding of fluctuating escape tectonics regimes along the Denali fault system over the Cretaceous-Cenozoic.