2.3. Component 3 ‘Dynamic topography reconstruction’

Although the Solid Earth has continuously changed, it has retained a record of its evolution. A major challenge is to elucidate the role played by internal lithospheric processes and external forcing in controlling the rates of erosion and sedimentation. The sedimentary cover of the lithosphere provides a high-resolution record of changing environments, and of deformation and mass transfer at the Earth surface, as wells as at different depth levels in the crust, lithosphere, and sub-lithospheric mantle. TOPO-EUROPE researchers have made pioneering contributions to explain the relationships between lithosphere-scale tectonic processes and the sedimentary record, demonstrating, for example, the intrinsic control exerted by lithospheric intraplate stress fields on stratigraphic sequences and on the record of relative sea-level change in sedimentary basins (Cloetingh et al., 1990; De Bruijne and Andriessen, 2002; Hendriks and Andriessen, 2002). By now, there is growing awareness that neotectonic processes can seriously affect the fluid flow in sedimentary basins and that fluid flow can have a major effect on the geothermal regime, and hence on calculated denudation and erosion quantities (Ter Voorde et al., 2004). Monitoring of the sedimentary and deformation record provides constraints for present-day deformation rates and thus feedback to component 1 and 2.

Whereas in the analysis of sedimentary basins tectonics, eustasy and sediment supply are usually treated as separate factors, TOPO-EUROPE will pursue in carefully selected natural laboratories an integrated approach that is constrained by fully 3-D quantitative subsidence and uplift history analyses. Recent work by TOPO-EUROPE scientists has also elucidated the control exerted by the inherited mechanical weakness of the lithosphere on its subsequent evolution, as expressed by the geological and geophysical record of orogenic belts and sedimentary basins in intraplate domains and the related development of topography. The mechanical properties of the lithosphere depend on its temperature regime and composition (Cloetingh et al., 2003a; Cloetingh et al., 2003b; Andriessen and Garcia Castellanos, 2004; Cloetingh et al., 2004; Cloetingh and Van Wees, 2005). Therefore TOPO-EUROPE will endeavour to fully integrate geothermochronology and material property analyses of the lithosphere with the reconstruction of its past evolution, derived from the sedimentary record. In doing so, TOPO-EUROPE will trespass traditional boundaries between endogene and exogene geology.