Barbara Carrapa

About

Barbara Carrapa is a Professor of Geosciences at the University of Arizona, with a focus on the interactions between tectonic processes and climate in shaping Earth's surface and paleoenvironments. She specializes in sedimentary geology, basin analysis, tectonics, and thermochronology. Her extensive research has taken her to regions including the Andes, Pamir, Alps, Tibet, Nepal, and Western North America. Her fundamental questions involve understanding how climate influences erosion, deposition, and paleoecology over millions of years, how tectonics interacts with climate to form Earth's highest topography, and how deep Earth's processes affect crustal evolution. Carrapa is also engaged in technique development, including multi-dating and geochemistry of accessory minerals such as apatite. She has held various academic positions, including Full Professor at the University of Arizona since 2016, Department Head of Geosciences from 2018 to 2023, and has been involved in international research as a guest professor at ETH Zürich and a research fellow at the University of Potsdam and Vrije University. Her contributions to the field have been recognized with awards such as the W.R. Dickinson Medal from SEPM in 2022, a fellowship from the Geological Society of America, and the Sofja Kovalevskaja Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Her research aims to elucidate the complex interactions between tectonics, surface erosion, and climate in shaping Earth's topography and…

Research topics

• Geology
• Paleontology
• Geography
• Oceanography
• Physical geography
• Climatology
• Geochemistry

Selected publications

• The role of the westerlies and orography in Asian hydroclimate since the late Oligocene

  Geology · 2020 · 83 citations

  Abstract Interactions between midlatitude westerlies and the Pamir–Tian Shan mountains significantly impact hydroclimate patterns in Central Asia today, and they played an important role in driving Asian aridification during the Cenozoic. We show that distinct west-east hydroclimate differences were established over Central Asia during the late Oligocene (ca. 25 Ma), as recorded by stable oxygen isotopic values of soil carbonates. Our climate simulations show that these differences are present w…

  DOI

• Resolving mid- to upper-crustal exhumation through apatite petrochronology and thermochronology

  Chemical Geology · 2021 · 48 citations

  DOI

• Climate as the Great Equalizer of Continental‐Scale Erosion

  Geophysical Research Letters · 2021 · 42 citations

  Abstract Central Asia hosts the most extensive and highest topography on Earth, which is the result of the feedbacks among rock uplift, atmospheric circulation and moisture transport, and erosion. Here, we analyze 2,511 published low‐temperature thermochronometric ages as a proxy of the regional‐scale erosion of Central Asia. We compare these ages to tectonic and climate proxies, and state‐of‐the‐art paleoclimate simulations to constrain the influences of climate and tectonics on the topographic…

  DOI

• Regional exhumation of the Laramide Province

  Geological Society of America Bulletin · 2025-02-18 · 6 citations

  article

  Abstract Western North America is the archetypical Cordilleran orogenic system that preserves a Mesozoic to Cenozoic record of oceanic Farallon plate subduction-related processes. After prolonged Late Jurassic through mid-Cretaceous normal-angle Farallon plate subduction that produced the western North American batholith belt and retroarc fold-thrust belt, a period of low-angle, flat-slab subduction during Late Cretaceous–Paleogene time caused upper plate deformation to migrate eastward in the f…

  PublisherDOI

• Miocene Construction of the High Andes Recorded by Exhumation of the Frontal Cordillera, La Ramada Massif of Western Argentina (32°S)

  Tectonics · 2025-01-01 · 3 citations

  article

  Abstract The Frontal Cordillera is a first‐order geologic feature of the southern central Andes, hosting the highest hinterland topography above the modern Pampean flat‐slab segment. The timing of Frontal Cordillera exhumation is important for testing models of Andean tectonics, yet large latitudinal gaps exist between structural and thermochronological constraints for the region. We conducted a thermochronometric study using a 4.4 km age‐elevation transect along the northeast ridge of Cerro Mer…

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• TIMING OF COOLING AND EXHUMATION OF LARAMIDE UPLIFTS INFORMS MODELS OF FLAT-SLAB SUBDUCTION

  NSF · $427k · 2019–2024

• Collaborative Research: Investigating Mesozoic Deformation in the Pamir: Implications for Crustal Thickening in the Pamir and the Evolution of the Tibetan Orogen

  NSF · $332k · 2015–2020

• Collaborative Research: Climatic and Tectonic Controls on Sedimentation and Incision in the Marginal Basins of the Southern Puna Plateau

  NSF · $138k · 2007–2010

Frequent coauthors

• Peter G. DeCelles

  University of Arizona

  104 shared

• Paul Kapp

  University of Arizona

  36 shared

• George E. Gehrels

  33 shared

• L. M. Schoenbohm

  University of Toronto

  31 shared

• Gilby Jepson

  University of Oklahoma

  30 shared

• Mihai N. Ducea

  University of Bucharest

  26 shared

• Andrea Stevens Goddard

  18 shared

• Mark T. Clementz

  University of Wyoming

  17 shared

Education

• PhD, Earth Sciences

  Vrije University Amsterdam Onderzoeksgroep Organische Chemie

  2002

Awards & honors

• W.R. Dickinson Medal from the Society for Sedimentary Geolog…
• Arizona Leadership Institute graduate and fellow (2022)
• Geological Society of America (GSA) Fellow (2017)
• Outstanding faculty award, University of Arizona, Dept. of G…
• Sofja Kovalevskaja Award, Alexander von Humboldt Foundation,…

Similar researchers at University of Arizona

• Diane Thompsonh-131