Vertical Mountain Movement Seen Live

In a groundbreaking new success, researchers managed to observe for the first time the vertical evolution of a major mountain range. The research was conducted on the Southern Alps of New Zealand.

It only took a decade of accurate GPS measurements for researchers to become able to figure out this mystery. The high-precision of the signals allows them to discover how the mountains were growing taller.

Catching such vertical motions as they happen, and within such a narrow time frame, came as a very pleasant surprise for the investigators behind the work.

“I don't think anyone has done vertical movement outside of places like Canada, where it is due to the removal of the ice,” says scientist Peter Molnar.

“The reason that we chose to use the Southern Alps is because they are moving very quickly,” explains the expert.

He holds a joint appointment at the University of Colorado-Boulder (UCB), as a professor of geological sciences, and as a fellow in the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences.

For reasons that still remain a mystery, the vertical motion in the Southern Alps appears to be most significant near the top of the mountains, rather than at the bottom.

The height of the mountain range increased by as much as 0.2 inches (5 millimeters) each year. But Molnar says that the team still doesn't know which factor contributes to the rise more.

The researchers suspect that tectonic plates and their activity may be pushing the mountain upwards, but say that the erosion of valleys around the range may also be making them appear taller.

Molnar told OurAmazingPlanet that the Southern Alps are located exactly at the point where the Indo-Australian and the Pacific tectonic plates meet up.

The new work is being detailed in the September issue of the esteemed scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters.

“The motivation behind this [study] is finding out to what extent is this vertical movement due to plate movement and to what extent is it other effects such as erosion,” goes on to say.

“New Zealand is eroding very quickly. When you look at vertical movement you have to wonder which of the various effects is causing this,” he adds.

“We plan to go back in the near future and do a gravity measurement. This will begin to separate for us how much movement is due to erosion,” the expert concludes.