Michaël Pons

GD Geodynamics

The 2022 Outstanding Student and PhD candidate Presentation (OSPP) Award is awarded to Michaël Pons for the poster/PICO entitled:

Variability of the shortening rate in Central Andes controlled by subduction dynamics and interaction between slab and overriding plate (Pons, M.; Sobolev, S.; Liu, S.; Neuharth, D.)

Click here to download the poster/PICO file.

Michaël Pons is a PhD student at the University of Potsdam and affiliated with the German Research Centre for Geosciences GFZ. He works with Prof. Stephan V. Sobolev in the Geodynamic Modelling Section 2.5 led by Dr. Sascha Brune. He is mainly interested in the surface expression resulting from subduction dynamics and overriding plate interaction using generic 2D models and highly resolved data-driven 3D geodynamic models, while incorporating realistic lateral mantle viscosity. In the international graduate school StRATEGy (Surface Processes, Tectonics and Georesources: The Andean foreland basin of Argentina), he highlighted 2 new mechanisms associated with plate interaction at the convergent margin: (i) trench hindrance associated with slab steepening, which he presented at the EGU, and (2) crustal contraction and transpression of continental crust associated with the arrival of a flat slab (e.g. the Pampean and Laramide flat slab).