Research into the sedimentary and tectonic evolution of active and collisional plate margins form the focus of my research efforts. Current fields of specific interest include land-ocean interactions in the marginal seas of Asia, especially the Arabian Sea and the South China Sea. I am also working on associated syn-orogenic sedimentation in the Himalaya and am developing single grain geochemical techniques to link clastic provenance studies with thermochronologic methods in order to reconstruct orogenic erosion histories. Reconstruction of Asian monsoon intensity over millennial and million year time scales is an important objective with the goal of understand its influence on orogenic erosion. The role that erosion and weathering have in controlling long term development of global climate and how south and SE Asia have influenced the climate system is a particular topic of interest.
Peter Clift