Factors controlling high elevations in the Canadian Cordillera: Isostatic analysis and thermal contributions
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The Canadian Cordillera is characterized by higher mean elevation and thinner crust compared to the adjacent craton to the east, in apparent contradiction with the Airy isostatic model. Roy Hyndman hypothesized that the high Cordillera elevations may be supported by an overall hot, low-density Cordilleran backarc mantle, but this idea hasn't been tested at the regional scale. We use a new high-resolution crustal thickness model for western Canada derived from teleseismic receiver functions and active source data, to conduct a detailed analysis of elevation-crustal thickness trends in four distinct regions: forearc, backarc, foreland, and craton. The backarc and foreland regions have higher elevations relative to the forearc and craton, requiring additional buoyancy beneath these areas. Using a grid search, we find that unrealistically low crustal densities are required to explain the high elevations and, therefore, the support must come from below the crust. To isolate the mantle component, we use a global crustal density model to correct for the effects of crustal density variations. After correction, the elevation-crustal thickness trends in each area align with the Airy hypothesis. For a given crustal thickness, the elevation of the backarc region is ~700 m higher than that of the craton. This is consistent with uplift caused by a hot backarc mantle. However, the difference is lower than that determined for the entire North American Cordillera (~1600 m). This may suggest the mantle under the Canadian Cordillera is slightly cooler than regions to the adjacent US Cordillera, perhaps due to the absence of ongoing subduction.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".