This project aims at investigating the recent tectonics of the Tien-Shan and Altai belts and the Baikal rift zone in Central Asia, for a better understanding of intracontinental mountain building processes and associated sedimentary basin formation, in response to compressional foreland deformation caused by the Himalayan-Tibet orogeny. In these regions, the recent development of sedimentary basins in presently active tectonic areas is a combined effect of lithospheric and upper crustal deformation induced by far field and locally generated stresses. Recent works based of field observation, analogue and numerical modeling showed that lithospheric-scale folding is a primary response to compressional tectonic stresses.

In a first step, this project aims at imaging the stress evolution in space and time during the Cenozoic. In a second step, it examines stress-induced deformation field during late Cenozoic, in terms of both lithospheric folding and upper crustal faulting. Characteristic wavelengths of lithospheric buckling obtained by Fourier transform analysis of topographic profiles are examined in function of the thermotectonic age of the crust. Relations between brittle faulting and lithospheric folding are examined closely in the field in the Gorny-Altai region of South-Siberia and the Issyk-Kul region of the Kyrgyz Tien Shan. The proposed processes are be validated by analogue and numerical modeling performed.