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GSA 2007 Annual Meeting Technical Program, p. 20 VOL. 17, No. 9 A PublicatioN Of the GeoloGical SoCiety Of AMeRica SePteMbeR 2007 Blue Nile incision on the Ethiopian Plateau: Pulsed plateau growth, Pliocene uplift, and hominin evolution Section Meetings Cordilleran and Rocky Mountain Joint Meeting, p. 49 Northeastern Section Meeting, p. 52 South-Central Section Meeting, p. 53 Penrose Conference Report, p. 55 Field Forum Report, p. 57 VoluMe 17, NuMbeR 9 SePteMbeR 2007 Cover: image (~40 × 20 km): 3-D perspective view (vertical exaggeration 5) of part of the Gorge of the Nile on the northwestern ethiopian Plateau (south of Mount Choke) generated by draping advanced spaceborne thermal emission and reflection radiometer (ASTER) image (7-3-1) over 15-m horizontal resolution ASTER digital elevation GSA TODAY publishes news and information for more than 20,000 GSA members and subscribing libraries. GSA Today model. trunk river (blue Nile) is flowing toward the lead science articles should present the results of exciting new viewer. Photo (~10 × 7 km): Section from the same research or summarize and synthesize important problems area, where the blue Nile deeply dissects Mesozoic or issues, and they must be understandable to all in the sandstones. See “blue Nile incision on the ethiopian earth science community. Submit manuscripts to science Plateau: Pulsed plateau growth, Pliocene uplift, and editors Stephen Johnston, [email protected], or David Fastovsky, hominin evolution,” by Gani et al., p. 4–11. [email protected]. GSA TODAY (ISSN 1052-5173 USPS 0456-530) is published 11 times per year, monthly, with a combined April/May issue, by SCIENCE ARTICLE The Geological Society of America, Inc., with offices at 3300 Penrose Place, Boulder, Colorado. Mailing address: P.O. Box 4 Blue Nile incision on the Ethiopian Plateau: Pulsed plateau growth, 9140, Boulder, CO 80301-9140, USA. 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Royhan Gani*, Energy & Geoscience tonically active landscapes, including the Himalayas, Rockies, Alps, Pyrenees, Andes, and Southern Alps (New Zealand). The Institute, University of Utah, 423 Wakara Way, Suite 300, erosional history of the Colorado (e.g., Pederson et al., 2002; Salt Lake City, Utah 84108, USA; Mohamed G. Abdelsalam, McMillan et al., 2006, and references therein) and the Tibetan Geological Sciences and Engineering, University of Missouri, plateaus (e.g., Clark et al., 2004; Schoenbohm et al., 2004, and 123 McNutt Hall, Rolla, Missouri 65409, USA references therein), both situated within collisional orogenic belts, are well studied. Conversely, studies of the erosional his- tory of the non-orogenic Ethiopian Plateau are few and pre- liminary (McDougall et al., 1975; Weissel et al., 1995; Pik et al., ABSTRACT 2003). Relative to other elevated regions where direct glacial The 1.6-km-deep Gorge of the Nile, a rival of the Grand Can- erosion is pronounced, the Ethiopian Plateau is least affected yon, resulted from the deep incision of the Blue Nile drainage into by Cenozoic global cooling and/or Pleistocene glacial cycles the uplifted Ethiopian Plateau. Understanding the incision history because of its location close to the equator (cf. Molnar and of the plateau is crucial to unraveling the Cenozoic tectonocli- England, 1990). Moreover, because of its non-orogenic setting, matic evolution of the region, particularly because the region has tectonic exhumation of the Ethiopian Plateau is insignificant. long been used as a natural laboratory to understand the geody- Therefore, river incision and plateau uplift (tectonic and/or iso- namics of continental rifting and the evolution of hominins. We static) have a more direct coupling for the Ethiopian Plateau. undertake a quantitative geomorphologic approach integrating The Blue Nile, a major tributary of the Nile River, extensively field, geographic information system (GIS), and digital elevation dissected the northwestern Ethiopian Plateau (Fig. 1), exposing model (DEM) data to analyze incision (volume, long-term rates, igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary rock units ranging in age and spatiotemporal variability) and river longitudinal profiles of from Neoproterozoic to Holocene (Figs. 2 and 3). The plateau is the Blue Nile drainage. Previously published isotopic ages of the also characterized by the deeply incised Gorge of the Nile (Fig. Cenozoic volcanic rocks are used to constrain long-term incision 3; Gani and Abdelsalam, 2006), the deepest and most extensive rates through geologic time. canyon in the greater Nile drainage basin and a rival of the Grand Our data argue that (1) the Blue Nile drainage has removed Canyon of the Colorado Plateau. 3 at least 93,200 km of rocks from the northwestern Ethiopian In the Late Jurassic, the plateau was below sea level for the last Plateau since ca. 29 Ma (early Oligocene) through a three-phase time, as indicated by the deposition of marine Upper