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Deformation within mountain belts and along faults can transport rocks that were once deep within the Earth up to the surface. Fission track thermochronology is a laboratory method that yields the time when rock rose through the 2 to 5 km depth window, allowing large-scale time-space patterns of mountain building to be reconstructed. The best studies of this type generally involve careful integration of field-based structural studies with laboratory thermochronology data. Our fission track laboratory has applied these approaches in a variety of tectonic settings, including reconstructing time-space patterns of extension across the Basin and Range Province, analyzing margin-wide shortening across the San Andreas fault system, reconstructing mountain-building in China during the India-Asia collision, and analyzing exhumation of high-pressure rocks within the Franciscan subduction complex. A new laboratory for (U-Th)/He thermochonology, a highly complimentary method for dating exhumation within shallower depth intervals resides in our Noble Gas laboratory.
