Large‐scale drainage capture and surface uplift in eastern Tibet–SW China before 24 Ma inferred from sediments of the Hanoi Basin, Vietnam

Abstract

Current models of drainage evolution suggest that the non‐dendritic patterns seen in rivers in SE Asia reflect progressive capture of headwaters away from the Red River during and as a result of surface uplift of Eastern Asia. Mass balancing of eroded and deposited rock volumes demonstrates that the Red River catchment must have been much larger in the past. In addition, the Nd isotope composition of sediments from the Hanoi Basin, Vietnam, interpreted as paleo‐Red River sediments, shows rapid change during the Oligocene, before ∼24 Ma. We interpret this change to reflect large‐scale drainage capture away from the Red River, possibly involving loss of the middle Yangtze River. Reorganization was triggered by regional tilting of the region towards the east. This study constrains initial surface uplift in eastern Tibet and southwestern China to be no later than 24 Ma, well before major surface uplift and gorge incision after 13 Ma.

Provenance of Upper Miocene to Quaternary sediments in the Yinggehai-Song Hong Basin, South China Sea: Evidence from detrital zircon U–Pb ages

“…However, our data did not provide a valid indicator to confirm the presence provenance of the Songpan-Garze. Most studies have evidence to suggest that Red River drainage occurred by river capture and surface uplift in eastern Tibet that predated the Late Miocene (Clift et al, 2002;Clark et al, 2004Clark et al, , 2005Clift et al, 2006a;Yan et al, 2011a), which means that if the provenance of the Songpan-Garze has existed in the samples, the most likely explanation is the clastic material from the Songpan-Garze to Y-SH Basin by the contribution of input from recycled sources. The detrital zircon U-Pb ages cannot distinguish between the first-cycle and the multi-cycle zircons so that we are unable to constrain the influence of the SongpanGarze.…”

“…The paleo-Red River system is considered to have been disrupted by a series of drainage capture events which may correspond to the regional surface uplift of eastern Asia (Clark et al, 2004;Clift et al, 2006a;Zheng et al, 2013). The paleo-Red River was originally proposed to have more dendritic drainage that drained into the South China Sea, which included the headwaters of the modern Mekong, Salween, Changjiang and Tsangpo (Clark et al, 2004).…”

“…Clark et al (2004) argued that paleo-drainage occurred by river capture in eastern Tibet prior to or coeval with the Miocene using the method of digital elevation model analyses. Clift et al (2006a) suggested that the large-scale drainage capture away from the Red River possibly happened during the Oligocene (before ca. 24 Ma) based on mass balance between depths of erosion Yan et al (2011a) proposed that an expanded drainage must have predated the Oligocene based on detrital zircon U-Pb dating and a bedrock thermochronological study.…”

“…Other studies argue that the Mekong, Salween and Tsangpo were never connected to the paleo-Red River (e.g. Clift et al, 2006a;Hoang et al, 2009). Up to now, the time of drainage capture away from the paleoRed River system is still controversial.…”

“…4) and can be considered much larger if when used to be connected to the Yangtze and other rivers (e.g. Clark et al, 2004;Clift et al, 2006a;Hoang et al, 2009). Modern Red River drains through the NNW strike Red River Fault Zone (RRFZ) which located in south margin of the Yangtze Craton (Fig.…”