Sarah George

Tectonics, Sedimentology and Stratigraphy, Geochronology, Geochemistry, Field-based geology, Paleoclimate

My scientific interests lie in using the sedimentary record to reconstruct tectonic and climatic interactions in mountainous regions.  Large mountain belts drive interactions between the solid earth, hydrosphere, biosphere, and atmosphere.  These orogenic systems are the loci of intense continental weathering, and control sediment and geochemical fluxes into the oceans.  Sedimentary basins provide temporally calibrated archives of tectonics and climate.  By integrating records of sediment routing, climate, magmatism, and uplift, my research seeks to unravel the dynamic feedbacks in mountain systems.

Questions guiding my current research include:

• What drives changes in Cordilleran orogenesis? How do changes in the subducting slab manifest in the overriding plate?
• How are climatic shifts (both rapid and sustained) expressed in the sedimentary record?
• What insights can trace element chemistry give us into shifts in tectonic regimes and sediment routing systems?

I have active projects along the Andes Mountains, the Canadian Cordillera, and in the Nepalese Himalaya. 

George, S.W.M., Perez, N.D., Struble, W., Ellis Curry, M., Horton, B.K., 2022, Aseismic ridge subduction focused late Cenozoic exhumation above the Peruvian flat slab: Earth and Planetary Science Letters.

George, S.W.M., Horton, B.K., Vallejo, C., Jackson, L.J., and Gutierrez, E.G., 2021, Did accretion of the Caribbean oceanic plateau drive rapid crustal thickening in the northern Andes?: Geology.

George, S.W.M., Nelson, J., Greig, C., Alberts, D., Gehrels, G.E., 2021, Tectonic origin and Triassic-Jurassic accretionary history of Stikinia from U-Pb geochronology and Hf isotope analysis, British Columbia: Tectonics.

George, S.W.M., Davis, S., Fernandez, R., Manríquez, L., Leppe, M., Horton, B.K., Clarke, J., 2020, Chronology of deposition and unconformity development across the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary, Magallanes-Austral Basin, Patagonian Andes, in Folguera, A., eds., Patagonian Basins, Journal of South American Earth Sciences.