Tectonic and climate forcing of exhumation in the SE Tibetan Plateau over the past 7 Ma: Insights from the deltaic-submarine fan system in the Andaman Sea, northeastern Indian Ocean

Abstract

The Tibetan Plateau and its adjacent areas are a typical example for studying the relationship between plateau uplift, climate change, and surface erosion. It has been argued that the South Asian monsoon (SAM) strengthened significantly at 10–8 Ma, whereas others suggested that the SAM weakened at that time. Here we report a large deltaic-submarine fan system in the Andaman Sea with a high sediment accumulation rate during the Pliocene. We propose that the formation of the deltaic-submarine fan was a result of climate and tectonics over the past 7 Myr. Our findings are based on multi-method provenance analyses (heavy minerals, bulk-rock geochemistry, detrital zircon UPb ages, and seismic data) of the Late Miocene-Pleistocene deltaic-submarine fan system. The analyses, in combination with those of the modern river sediments and potential source regions, suggest that the Upper Miocene sediments were mainly derived from the eastern Lhasa Terrane and northern West Burma Terrane (Upper Salween and Upper Irrawaddy, respectively), whereas the Pliocene-Pleistocene deposits were primarily derived from the eastern Lhasa Terrane, northern West Burma Terrane, and Tengchong Terrane (Lower Salween River), with small inputs from the Sibumasu and Baoshan terranes. We propose a modified scenario in which the Salween initiated in the early Late Miocene (10 Ma) and the Irrawaddy developed a modern geometrical morphology after the Pliocene. These two large rivers transported eroded materials from the SE Tibetan Plateau into the Andaman Sea and formed the deltaic-submarine fan. The high sediment accumulation rate (>530 m/Myr) in the Pliocene is consistent with the strengthened SAM and heterogeneous crustal deformation of the SE Tibetan Plateau during the same interval. We conclude that both the climate and tectonics have direct effects on exhumation of the SE Tibetan Plateau over the past Late Miocene-Quaternary.