Alessandro Forte

Alessandro Forte is a Professor of Earth and Atmosphere Sciences at the University of Quebec at Montreal (UQAM), and he holds the Canada Research Chair in Dynamic Earth Modeling.  He holds a B.A.Sc. in Engineering Science from the University of Toronto (1983), and an M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Physics, also from the University of Toronto (1985 and 1989, respectively).  After completing his studies, Dr. Forte held a post-doctoral fellowship at Harvard University from 1989-92, and then worked as a Research Associate there until 1994.  For the next four and a half years, he held positions at the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris (IPGP) in France, before becoming a faculty member at the University of Western Ontario in November 1998.  He became a member of CIAR’s Earth System Evolution Program in 2001, and moved to UQAM in 2003.

Dr. Forte is a member of the Canadian Geophysical Union, the American Geophysical Union, and the European Geophysical Society.

Dr. Forte describes his research as follows:

One of the major objectives in modern day Earth Physics is understanding the planetary-scale transport of mass and heat in Earth's deep interior. This thermal convection process is responsible for a remarkably wide variety of dynamical interactions between the Earth's liquid core and solid overlying mantle, between different layers within the mantle, between the mantle and external crust, and even between the Earth and other planets in the Solar System. The main objective of my research activities is the elucidation of the spatial and temporal variation of the slow creep or flow of material in Earth's solid interior over geological time. This research also focuses on understanding and modeling the consequences of this mantle flow on a wide variety of processes occurring on the Earth's surface, such as: the tectonic plate motions and the associated ‘drift’ of continents; large-scale variations in surface topography and associated sea level changes which are recorded in deep sedimentary basins in continental interiors; dynamic stresses in Earth's crust; perturbations in Earth's orbital motions and resulting variations in paleoclimate which are recorded in sedimentary cycles and rhythms.

This broad program of research involves a quantitative, multi-disciplinary, ‘Earth systems’ approach to global geodynamics, which benefits from collaboration with colleagues working in a wide spectrum of disciplines (e.g., seismology, fluid mechanics, solid mechanics, classical mechanics, mineral physics, paleomagnetism, geochemistry, numerical methods, computational modeling).