Collision and mountain building

Abstract

The spatial, chronological, and genetic relationships of recent (Late Alpine) collisions to mountain building are considered at three levels of scale: (i) in separate zones of the Arabian–Caucasus segment of the Alpine–Himalayan Orogenic Belt, (ii) throughout the central segment of this belt from the Alps to the Himalalayas, and (iii) in Central Asia and other mountain belts of continents. Three stages of mountain building are distinguished at all three levels. The first stage starts with widespread collision and similar plate interactions from the end of the Eocene to the middle Miocene and is expressed in the formation of uplifts, commonly no higher than the moderately elevated level in regions that concentrate deformations of transverse shortening induced by compression. The second short stage, which embraces the Pliocene–Quaternary and occasionally the end of the Miocene, differs in general, though differentiated in the value and intensification of vertical movements, when the height of mountains increases by 2–3 times. Elevations are spread over certain platform territories and even frameworks of rift zones. This is related not so much to the intensity of compression and shortening as to the compositional transformation of the upper mantle and the lower crust, leading to their decompaction. Comparison with the Hercynian and Caledonian orogenic stages shows that the second phase, predetermined by widespread collision, reflects a more important geodynamic event expressed in a change of the global plate interaction system and its deep-seated sources.