Fluctuating Lake Levels in Rift Basins and its Impact on Extensional Tectonics

The feedback between climate driven processes; weathering, erosion, sediment transport, and deposition, and extensional tectonics is limited to a few studies (Burov and Cloething, 1997; Burov and Poliakov, 2001; Bialas and Buck, 2009; Theunissen and Huismans, 2019; Andrés-Martínez et al., 2019) despite these processes having been shown to impact the stress state and deformation along active orogens (Koons, 1989; Molnar and England, 1990; Avouac and Burov, 1996; Willett, 1999). Here we utilize a fully coupled landscape evolution and thermomechanical extensional model to investigate the potential impact on faulting and extension due to lake loading changes driven by changes in climate on processional timescales. Fault analyses focusing on heave, throw, and magnitude of dip on faults generated within each model are used to characterize individual faults response to stress changes and rift basin evolution. Preliminary results indicate that fluctuations in lake levels in response to climate change may impact the lithospheric stress state by changing both fault and basin geometries within an extensional basin.