Abstract: Crustal Structure of Mountain Belts and Basins: Industry and Academic Collaboration at Cornell

Richard Allmendinger, Muawia Barazangi, Larry Brown, Larry Cathles, Bryan Isacks, Teresa Jordan, Sue Kay, James Knapp, Doug Nelson

Interdisciplinary investigations of the large-scale structure and evolution of key basins and orogenic belts around the world are the focal point of academic-industry interaction at Cornell. Ongoing and new initiatives with significant industry involvement include:

Project INDEPTH (Interdisciplinary Deep Profiling of Tibet and the Himalayas), a multinational effort to delineate deep structure across the type example of active continent-continent collision. 300 km of deep reflection profiling was collected across the Himalayas and southern Tibet Plateau in 1992 and 1994.

CAP (Cornell Andes Project), a long-standing interdisciplinary effort to understand the structure and evolution of the Andes, with a focus on Argentina, Chile and Bolivia. A deep reflection profile is tentatively planned for 1997.

Intra-plate Orogeny in the Middle East and North Africa is the focus of multidisciplinary regional syntheses of existing seismic reflection and other databases in Syria (Palmyrides)and Morocco (Atlas), with an emphasis on reactivation and inversion tectonics.

Project URSEIS (Urals Reflection Seismic Experiment and Integrated Studies) is a collaboration with EUROPROBE to collect 500 km of vibroseis and dynamite deep reflection profiling across the southern Urals in 1995.

Project CRATON, an element in COCORP's systematic exploration of the continental US, is a nascent multi-disciplinary effort to understand the buried craton of the central US and the basins built upon it.

Global Basins Research Network (GBRN) is a diversified observational and computational effort to image and model the movement of pore fluids in detail and on a regional scale for a producing oil structure in the Gulf of Mexico.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90956©1995 AAPG International Convention and Exposition Meeting, Nice, France