Regional incision of the eastern margin of the Tibetan Plateau

New (U-Th)/He analyses from three elevation transects collected within river gorges that dissect the eastern margin of the Tibetan Plateau provide constraints on the rates and timing of accelerated river incision into the high-elevation, low-relief topography of the region. Apatite He data from the easternmost transect (Dadu River), ∼120 km from the plateau margin adjacent to the Sichuan Basin, indicate that rapid river incision of ∼0.33 ± 0.04 km/m.y. began at ca. 10 Ma and has continued to the present. Apatite He and zircon He data from the middle transect (Yalong River), collected ∼225 km SSW of the Dadu data, indicate that rapid river incision of ∼0.34 ± 0.02 km/m.y. began prior to ca. 14 Ma and continued until the early Quaternary, when it increased, likely in response to local uplift and erosion associated with active faults nearby. Apatite He and zircon He data from the westernmost transect (Yangtze River), ∼210 km W of the Yalong data, indicate that rapid river incision of ∼0.38 ± 0.04 km/m.y. began at or prior to ca. 10 Ma, though likely not prior to ca. 15 Ma, and has continued to the present. The regional consistency of these data indicates that the entire eastern margin of the Tibetan Plateau was being dissected by 10 Ma and that incision has been relatively constant and uniform in the region since that time; this pattern is consistent with an erosional response to broad regional uplift at or before 10 Ma. The larger amount, and earlier onset, of exhumation observed in the Yalong River gorge shows that certain areas on the eastern margin deviate from a simple regional pattern of epeirogenic uplift and subsequent river incision and probably reflect the superposition of local upper-crustal deformation and uplift on the broad regional pattern.