Fluvial Depositional Systems of the African Humid Period: An Analog for an Early, Wet Mars in the Eastern Sahara.

A widely hypothesized but complex transition from widespread fluvial activity to predominantly aeolian processes is inferred on Mars based on remote sensing data observations of ancient landforms. However, the lack of analysis of in situ martian fluvial deposits hinders our understanding of the flow regime nature and sustainability of the martian fluvial activity and the hunt for ancient life. Studying analogs from arid zones on Earth is fundamental to quantitatively understanding geomorphic processes and climate drivers that might have dominated during early Mars.

A Machine Learning-Based Approach to Clinopyroxene Thermobarometry: Model Optimization and Distribution for Use in Earth Sciences.

Thermobarometry is a fundamental tool to quantitatively interrogate magma plumbing systems and broaden our appreciation of volcanic processes. Developments in random forest-based machine learning lend themselves to a data-driven approach to clinopyroxene thermobarometry, allowing users to access large experimental data sets that can be tailored to individual applications in Earth Sciences. We present a methodological assessment of random forest thermobarometry using the R freeware package extraTrees.

Mantle Flow and Deforming Continents: From India-Asia Convergence to Pacific Subduction.

The formation of mountain belts or rift zones is commonly attributed to interactions between plates along their boundaries, but the widely distributed deformation of Asia from Himalaya to the Japan Sea and other back-arc basins is difficult to reconcile with this notion. Through comparison of the tectonic and kinematic records of the last 50 Ma with seismic tomography and anisotropy models, we show that the closure of the former Tethys Ocean and the extensional deformation of East Asia can be best explained if the asthenospheric mantle transporting India northward, forming the Himalaya and the Tibetan Plateau, reaches East Asia where it overrides the westward flowing Pacific mantle and contributes to subduction dynamics, distributing extensional deformation over a 3,000-km wide region. This deep asthenospheric flow partly controls the compressional stresses transmitted through the continent-continent collision, driving crustal thickening below the Himalayas and Tibet and the propagation of strike-slip faults across Asian lithosphere further north and east, as well as with the lithospheric and crustal flow powered by slab retreat east of the collision zone below East and SE Asia.

Increase in CO concentration could alter the response of to climate change.

Increasing CO concentration ([CO ]) is likely to affect future species distributions, in interaction with other climate change drivers. However, current modeling approaches still seldom consider interactions between climatic factors and the importance of these interactions therefore remains mostly unexplored. Here, we combined dendrochronological and modeling approaches to study the interactive effects of increasing [CO ] and temperature on the distribution of one of the main European liana species, .