Formation of the Great Bend and Enhanced Quaternary Incision of the Upper Yangtze River: New Insights from Low-Temperature Thermochronology and Tributary Morphology

The occurrence of a sharp turn along the upper course of the Yangtze River is referred to as the “Great Bend” and represents a large-scale drainage reorganization in response to the surface rise of the Tibetan Plateau. However, the timing and mechanism of the formation of the Great Bend remain disputed. In this paper, we report new (U–Th)/He and apatite fission track thermochronological data from the deep river valley in the Great Bend area of the southeastern margin of the Tibetan Plateau. Compared with the adjacent Jianchuan Basin, two phases of younger rapid cooling for the Great Bend area are identified based on thermal-history modeling, namely, Miocene (ca. 17 to 11–8 Ma) and Quaternary, with the former phase being contemporaneous with the formation of the anticline in the Tiger Leaping Gorge. Progressive increases in the normalized channel steepness (ksn) and the degree of river-valley incision with increasing distance downstream for tributaries of the Yangtze River in the Tiger Leaping Gorge indicate that river rerouting and formation of the Great Bend occurred during the Miocene. Samples located at the bottom of the Tiger Leaping Gorge also reveal a phase of rapid cooling since ca. 1.9 Ma, with an exhumation rate of 1.5 ± 0.2 mm/year. We hypothesize that enhanced Quaternary exhumation in the southeastern margin of the Tibetan Plateau occurred mainly within the narrow region between the Sichuan Basin and the Eastern Himalayan Syntaxis, corresponding to an episode of widespread extensional deformation superimposed above middle- to upper-crustal flexure in this region.