The Cenozoic India-Asia collision generated the Tibetan Plateau and the Himalayan collisional system, the latter consisting of the convergence-perpendicular Himalayan orogen and the convergence-parallel Eastern and Western Flanking Belts located along the margins of India. Studying the evolution of each of these tectonic domains is critical to understanding the collision process and differentiating the end-member models of indenter-induced continental deformation. Despite this importance, there is a notable lack of geologic investigations on the development of the flanking belts in comparison to the extensive research of the Tibetan Plateau and east-trending Himalayan orogen. To address this problem, the research of this dissertation is focused on the Mesozoic-Cenozoic tectonic evolution of the northernmost segment of the Eastern Flanking Belt, the northern Indo-Burma Ranges, which are located directly east to southeast of the eastern Himalayan syntaxis. In the following chapters, I integrate the results of geologic field mapping, balanced cross section construction and restoration, U-Pb zircon geochronology, whole-rock geochemistry, thermobarometry, and (U-Th)/He zircon thermochronology to examine the litho-structural framework of the northern Indo-Burma Ranges and tectonic relationships in time and space with the adjacent eastern Himalayan orogen, the southern Tibetan Plateau, and the Eastern Flanking Belt. The research of this dissertation shows that the study area exposes a southwest- to west-directed Cenozoic thrust belt cored by a hinterland-dipping duplex system. Thrust faults sole into a northeast- to east-dipping di collement, which extends to >30 km depth. Southwestward forward propagation of the thrust belt in the foreland was coeval with out-of-sequence thrusting in the hinterland. This structural framework combined with the observed southward deflection in the trends of ductile stretching lineations within shear zones (northeast-trending in the north and east-trending in the south) suggest deformation around the eastern Himalayan syntaxis is best approximated by models of clockwise lithospheric flow accommodated by distributed thrusting. Major lithologic units involved in the northern Indo-Burma thrust belt from south to north include the easternmost continuations of the Tertiary Sub-Himalayan Sequence, Proterozoic-Cambrian Lesser Himalayan Sequence, and Indus-Yarlung suture zone of the Himalayan orogen and the Mesozoic northern Gangdese batholith belt and Mesoproterozoic basement of the Lhasa terrane. However, several Himalayan-Tibetan lithologic units are missing, including the Paleoproterozoic-Ordovician Greater Himalayan Crystalline Complex, Proterozoic-Eocene Tethyan Himalayan Sequence, Mesozoic-Cenozoic Xigaze forearc basin, and Cenozoic igneous rocks of the southern Gangdese batholith. Research suggests that these units were present in the study area at the onset of the Cenozoic India-Asia collision and their present-day absence is related to an eastward increase in post-collisional crustal shortening and continental underthrusting along the Himalayan collisional system. This interpretation is supported by a Cenozoic shortening strain estimate of ~81% (>156 km) across the northern Indo-Burma Ranges and a dramatic southward decrease in the width of the collisional system from ~200 km across the Himalayan orogen to ~5 km across the study area. Active deformation across the northern Indo-Burma Ranges and adjacent southeastern Tibetan Plateau is characterized by right-slip transpression partitioned between the range-bounding, oblique-slip Mishmi thrust in the southwest and right-slip Puqu and Parlung faults of Jiali fault zone in the northeast. The leading Mishmi thrust is kinematically-linked with the ~1000-km-long, right-slip Sagaing fault to the south via a previously-unmapped, southwest-trending restraining bend. This structural relationship of the Eastern Flanking Belt provides a key example of the spatial transition from transpressional deformation near the corner of an indenter to discrete right-slip motion along the side of an indenter during continental collision.

The Himalayan mountain belt, which developed during the India–Asia collision starting about 55 Ma ago, is a dramatically active orogen and it is regarded as the classic collisional orogen. It is characterized by an impressively continuous 2500 km of tectonic units, thrusts and normal faults, as well as large volumes of high-grade metamorphic rocks and granites exposed at the surface. This constitutes an invaluable field laboratory, where amazing crustal sections can be observed directly in very deep gorges. It is possible to unravel the tectonic and metamorphic evolution of litho-units, to observe the mechanisms of exhumation of deep-seated rocks and the propagation of the deformation. Himalayan tectonics has been the target of many studies from numerous international researchers over the years. In the last 15 years there has been an explosion of data and theories from both geological and geophysical perspectives. This book presents the results of integrated multidisciplinary studies, including geology, petrology, magmatism, geochemistry, geochronology and geophysics, of the structures and processes affecting the continental lithosphere. These processes and their spatial and temporal evolution have major consequences on the geometry and kinematics of the India–Eurasia collision zone.

The Himalaya–Karakoram–Tibet mountain belt resulted from Cenozoic collision of India and Asia and is frequently used as the type example of a continental collision orogenic belt. The last quarter of a century has seen the publication of a remarkably detailed dataset relevant to the evolution of this belt. Detailed fieldwork backed up by state-of-the-art structural analysis, geochemistry, mineral chemistry, igneous and metamorphic petrology, isotope chemistry, sedimentology and geophysics produced a wide-ranging archive of data-rich scientific papers. The rationale for this book is to provide a coherent overview of these datasets in addressing the evolution of the mountain ranges we see today. This volume comprises 21 specially invited review papers on the Himalaya, Kohistan arc, Tibet, the Karakoram and Pamir ranges. These papers span the history of Himalayan research, chronology of the collision, stratigraphy, magmatic and metamorphic processes, structural geology and tectonics, seismicity, geophysics, and the evolution of the Indian monsoon. This landmark set of papers should underpin the next 25 years of Himalayan research.

Southwest Asia is one of the most remarkable regions on Earth in terms of active faulting and folding, large-magnitude earthquakes, volcanic landscapes, petroliferous foreland basins, historical civilizations as well as geologic outcrops that display the protracted and complex 540 m.y. stratigraphic record of Earth's Phanerozoic Era. Emerged from the birth and demise of the Paleo-Tethys and Neo-Tethys oceans, southwest Asia is currently the locus of ongoing tectonic collision between the Eurasia-Arabia continental plates. The region is characterized by the high plateaus of Iran and Anatolia fringed by the lofty ranges of Zagros, Alborz, Caucasus, Taurus, and Pontic mountains; the region also includes the strategic marine domains of the Persian Gulf, Gulf of Oman, Caspian, and Mediterranean. This 19-chapter volume, published in honor of Manuel Berberian, a preeminent geologist from the region, brings together a wealth of new data, analyses, and frontier research on the geologic evolution, collisional tectonics, active deformation, and historical and modern seismicity of key areas in southwest Asia.

The evolution of Asia has largely occurred over the last 400 million years, and continues today. Seeing a continent in the act of assembly provides a rare opportunity to study the processes by which continents are constructed and internally modified. This book is a collection of twenty-one contributions on the tectonic evolution of Asia. The book is divided into five parts: geodynamic models of the Cenozoic deformation in Asia, seismotectonics, geological evolution of the Himalaya–Karakoram Ranges, tectonics of the Cenozoic Indo–Asia collision, and Mesozoic–Paleozoic assembly of Asia. Several important problems are addressed in detail, including the origin of the Tibetan Plateau, the nature of ultra-high pressure metamorphism in east-central Asia, the accretion of microcontinents to Asia, and the accommodation mechanisms of the Indo-Asian collision. The Tectonic Evolution of Asia provides an authoritative description of our current understanding of Asian tectonics and continental growth for graduate students and researchers.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 11th International Symposium on Foundations of Information and Knowledge Systems, FoIKS 2020, held in Dortmund, Germany, in February 2020. The 19 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 33 submissions. The papers address various topics such as big data; database design; dynamics of information; information fusion; integrity and constraint management; intelligent agents; knowledge discovery and information retrieval; knowledge representation, reasoning and planning; logics in databases and AI; mathematical foundations; security in information and knowledge systems; semi-structured data and XML; social computing; the semantic web and knowledge management; and the world wide web.​