Sebastian Chevrot

Sebastien Chevrot is a CNRS senior scientist working at the Observatoire Midi Pyrenees in Toulouse, France. He is visiting CIRES this summer to work with Anne Sheehan, Vera Schulte-Pelkum, and others to study the deep architecture of the Bighorn Mountains and Tibetan Plateau. Detailed images of the deep architecture of continental orogens, in particular of their density structure, is crucial to unravel the relative importance of tectonics and climate change for the long term evolution of mountain ranges. However, the deep roots of continental orogens remain largely elusive, owing to the limited spatial resolution of conventional tomographic imaging techniques. Chevrot will be using his newly developed full waveform inversion methods to revisit the data from the Bighorn and Hi-Climb temporary experiments, to obtain high resolution images of lithospheric structures beneath the Bighorn Mountains and Tibetan Plateau. These images will be a valuable source of information to understand the structure and formation of continental orogens, and the long term support of high reliefs.