more information
This page provides project updates, makes some of our data available to the public, and provides links to topics of interest.
As we're just beginning to analyze and publish some of our results, it's still too early to post data. By the end of 2004 we expect to have several papers published and by then we'll have started to make more information available. And we're working on the links.
Forest, northern flanks of Namche Barwa
Project progress report.The project's official start date was in September, 2001. Our initial group field trip was scheduled for late September, and was effectively cancelled after the September 11 terrorist attacks. Zeitler and Meltzer did make an initial reconnaissance and sampling trip in October, 2001, and since then all teams have been in the field, in most cases multiple times. Problems with Namche Barwa permissions in 2002, ostensibly due to misbehavior by a foreign research team (not us!), caused some further delay in field work. Anne Meltzer and her group completed a pilot seismic experiment in 2002, and have deployed the full broadband array, currently scheduled for recovery in late 2004. Liu Yuping and colleagues at the Chengdu Institute have completed two of our three GPS campaigns, and work is largely complete on U-Pb, Ar-Ar, and zircon U-Th/He dating in the Bamche Barwa and Gyala Peri massifs.
We have held group meetings timed to coincide with the Fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union, which takes places in San Francisco every December. In 2002, this included a special group workshop hosted at Stanford University by Page Chamberlain. This workshop was attended by Chengdu colleagues Ding Jun (Director of the Chengdu Institute), Liu Yuping, and Zheng Lailin. At the 2004 AGU, groups members presented a total of nine posters and talks.
Groups from Stanford (petrology) and University of Washington (surface processes) spent time in the field in May and June, 2004, in collaboration with geologists from CIGMR (Chengdu Institute). Service runs for the seismic array, staffed by Lehigh and CIGMR geologists, continued during this period as well.
Project meeting, January 2005, at National Science Foundation headquarters
A group from Lehigh and from CIGMR made a quick trip to Tibet in October and November, 2004 to remove the seismic array and arrange for its return to PASSCAL in the USA. As we see the GPS and seismic results come in, the focus of our work is now shifting towards integrating these data with surface-process and geological observations, as well broadening tectonic and thermochronological work to a more regional scale.
On January 6-9, 2005, some twenty project members met at NSF headquarters in Arlington, VA to discuss our results to date and to update our science objectives for the remaining portion of the project.