The project by Dr Krzysztof Gaidzik and his team titled „Landscape evolution and active tectonics in the Central Andes” received funding in the OPUS-20 call of the National Science Center (NCN).
The Colca River located in Central Andes in southern Peru, creating one of the deepest valleys of the Western hemisphere, just recently registered as UNESCO Geopark, is ideally suited to study crustal deformation based on landscape features. In this project we propose to study the response of the morphology and drainage network to ongoing tectonic deformation in the Colca River catchment. Our results shuld help us to understand tectonic processes related to subduction zone, their relationship with faults located on the upper plate (i.e. South America plate), as well as the history and evolution of the formation of the deepest canyon on the Earth. Moreover, obtained information on past earthquakes and recurrence time in between those seismic events should help us to provide more accurate assessment of seismic hazard.
