The coupling between tectonics and surface processes fundamentally governs the dynamics of mountain belts and basins. A diverse range of geomorphic and sedimentary records including river long profiles, fluvial terraces, downstream fining trends, growth strata, sediment provenance, sequence stratigraphy and changing depositional environments have all provided first order constraints on the interactions between tectonics, erosion and deformation at the Earth’s surface. Additionally, the development of new methods to quantify erosion rates and source-to-sink sediment transfers from has enabled us to quantify with high resolution the tele-connections between surface processes, tectonics and climate at a range of temporal and spatial scales. Finally, the increasing integration of landscape evolution, stratigraphic and tectonic models has significantly improved our ability to explore how the rates and styles of deformation across diverse tectonic settings are recorded by the surface process system. Consequently, integrating different seemingly unconnected areas of research may provide unprecedented insights into landscape dynamics. These advances now make it possible to renew our understanding of the interactions between surface processes and tectonic deformation and raise the prospect of a quantitative inversion of geomorphic and stratigraphic archives for tectonics.

In this session we invite contributions that use geomorphic or sedimentary records to understand tectonic deformation, and we welcome studies that address the interactions and couplings between basin or upland tectonics and the sedimentary system from erosion to transport and deposition at a range of scales. In particular, we encourage coupled catchment-basin studies that take advantage of new numerical/physical modeling methods, geochemical tools for quantifying rates of surface processes (TCN, A-ZFT, OSL) and high resolution digital topographic and subsurface data. We also encourage field or subsurface sedimentological and structural studies of landscape evolution, growth relationships, sedimentary patterns and provenance in deformed settings, and contributions which address the role of surface processes in modulating rates of deformation and tectonic style.