Cenozoic Cooling Patterns from the Canadian Cordillera using the Uranium-Thorium-Helium Method

The Cenozoic cooling history of the Canadian Cordillera is important for understanding large-scale processes and relative importance of smaller geologic features. Our study uses the uranium-thorium-helium method, which provides a cooling history for upper crust (~2-6 km). Our data helps resolve near surface problems such as the amount and extent of overburden removed during the Cenozoic, the possible mechanisms to explain the loss of the thick overburden (i.e. tectonic, climate, erosion), and how our regional cooling history fits into the cooling histories we already have for the Cordillera. Using our data we estimated the amount of overburden removed from the Foreland Belt portion of our study, since the L. Paleocene, to be 5-9 km and did extend further west into the Cordillera. Using hanging wall and footwall relationships, we found that faulting, despite lying in the extensional regime in the current model did not control cooling.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Science (MSc)

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Geoscience

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

Graduate Studies

Year dc:date.issued

2013

Author dc:creator

• Bacque, David

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Guest, Bernard

• Geology

Statement dc:rights

• University of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission.

Language dc:language.iso

eng

DOI

http://dx.doi.org/10.11575/PRISM/25240

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:ucalgary.scholaris.ca:11023/663