HOW ARE INTERACTIONS OF SEISMIC CYCLE AND CLIMATE REFLECTED IN TOPOGRAPHY? IMPLICATIONS FOR UNDERSTANDING THE ARCHITECTURE OF LONG-TERM LANDSCAPE EVOLUTION

Landscape evolution is mainly governed by the head-to-head interactions of tectonic forcing and climate in actively deforming regions. Morphological forms are sensitive recorders of such imprints and a considerable number of previous studies have been dedicated to evaluating the relationship between earthquakes and climatic effects like precipitation. However, distinguishing the exact influence of the earthquake cycle or climate remains challenging and obscure in terms of long-term landscape evolution. This study aims to evaluate and test various simplified spatiotemporal earthquake cycles with respect to changing climatic conditions which will provide insights into the records and marks of paleo-seismic cycles on tectonically active landscapes. We will mainly employ numerical models to build the topography and simulate deformation models associated with various earthquake cycles. The preliminary simulations operated on the same topographic input under constant or cyclic climatic conditions with and without a simulated seismic cycle that is subject to different recurrence intervals. The results of these preliminary simulations demonstrate that the main components of fluvial channels such as 𝜒-elevation and steepness (k_sn) are approximately the same under consistent climate context with or without simulated seismic cycles, whereas when cyclical climate oscillations are introduced in the models with or without seismic cycles have meaningfully different final topography. These initial results indicate that fluvial topography may record aspects of earthquake cycles, specifically as a result of variable climate forcing. Further modelling work, along with field validation, is required to clarify details, but these preliminary results highlight the potential for these approaches to yield important data or proxies for the evolution stages of tectonically active landscapes.