Paleotopographic reconstruction on the basis of low-temperature thermochronological thermal history modelling

Abstract

The traditional paleotopographic explanation of mountain belts from low-temperature thermochronology is based on the simulation of low-temperature age data, the main defect of which is that we cannot make comparisons at the same time between the samples. In this article, we intend to make paleotopographic reconstruction on the basis of thermal history modelling. We first digitalize the thermal history curve and take contemporary temperatures for comparison, then reconstruct the paleotopography according to the distribution of the samples’ temperatures. The finite difference method is used to solve the diffusion equation for heat in the reconstruction process. Our paleotopography reconstruction method can restore the topography over time. However, due to the nature of thermal history modeling and the noise in the data, the accuracy of this reconstruction is currently limited.

Keywords

paleotopographic reconstruction / low-temperature thermochronology / thermal history modeling

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