UConn researchers use ancient plant leaf wax – signatures for what happened millions of years ago -- to reconstruct the history of Taiwan's mountains.
UConn researchers use ancient plant leaf wax – signatures for what happened millions of years ago -- to reconstruct the history of Taiwan's mountains.
When it comes to studying certain geological processes, you can’t get much closer to studying them in real-time than in Taiwan.
Taiwan experiences some of the world’s fastest rates of mountain building – they are growing at a faster rate than our fingernails grow in a year. The mountains also see frequent and significant earthquakes, the region experiences about four typhoons per year on average, and in some places, it receives upwards of several meters of rain annually, says UConn Associate Professor in the Department of Earth Sciences, Michael Hren.
These conditions are all due to Taiwan’s location at the convergence of the Eurasian and Philippine Sea plates, which leads to a landscape of extremes where you can see the mountains growing, falling, and weathering, all on a human timescale. Hren’s team and their collaborators from the University of Oregon have applied novel techniques to understand this changeable mountain range’s past. Their findings are published in Science Advances.
Read more at University of Connecticut
Image: Taiwan has some of the world’s fastest rates of mountain building. Studying the mountains of Taiwan provides insight into how the mountains are formed and grow. This view is st Hualien, Taiwan. (Photo courtesy of Queenie Chang via University of Connecticut)
