The project will address the uplift history of the Ellsworth Mountains, Antarctica, using apatite fission track analysis. Collections will be made during the 1989-90 field season by a four-person party working with snowmobiles from tent camps. The sampling strategy is to collect three horizontal transects of the Ellsworth Mountains, and three vertical profiles on areas of maximum relief. Apatite will be separated from returned samples and processed for counting by the external-detector method in the Fission-Track Dating Laboratory at Arizona State University. Track length studies will also be performed. The project will attempt to determine the time of initiation of uplift, uplift rates, the amount of uplift, and whether more than one episode of uplift has occurred. The Ellsworth Mountains are one of a collage of microplates in West Antarctica which moved relative to each other during and/or subsequent to the breakup of Gondwana. This project will constrain the timing of these movements.
