Late Pleistocene and Holocene slip rate of the Northern Wadi Araba fault, Dead Sea Transform, Jordan

Abstract

The Wadi Araba Valley is a morphotectonic depression along part of theDead Sea Transform (DST) plate boundary that separates the Arabian plateon the east from the Sinai subplate on the west. The Wadi Araba fault(WAF) is the main strike-slip faults one of between the Gulf of Aqaba and the E-Wtrending Khunayzira (Amatzayahu) fault that bounds the southern end ofthe Dead Sea. Just south of the Dead Sea, the WAF cuts across severalgenerations of alluvial fans that formed on tributaries to the Wadi Dahalafter the regression of Late Pleistocene Lake Lisan ca. 15 ka. Geomorphicand stratigraphic evidence of active faulting, including left-laterally offsetstream channels and alluvial-fan surfaces, yielded fault slip-rate data for thenorthern segment of WAF. Typical cumulative displacements of 54 m,39 m, and 22.5 m of stream channels and alluvial-fan surfaces acrossthe fault were measured from detailed geologic and topographic mapping.The 54 m offset of the oldest alluvial-fan surface (Q f1 ) occurredafter the final lowering of Lake Lisan (16–15 ka) and before 11 ka yieldinga slip-rate range of 3.4 mm/yr to 4.9 mm/yr. Based on radiocarbonages of charcoal and landsnail shell samples from the buried Q f2 alluvial-fan deposits exposed in trenches excavated across the fault, the39 m and 22.5 m offsets occurred after 9 ka and 5.8 ka, respectively. These data yield a slip-rate range between 3.9 mm/yr and 6.0 mm/yr.The small variability in these slip-rate estimates for different time periodssuggests that the northern Wadi Araba fault has maintained a relativelyconstant slip rate in the past 15 ka. We calculate an average slip rate of 4.7± 1.3 mm/yr since 15 ka based on the three separate displacementsand age estimates. Five separate offsets of 3 m were measured from gullybends and the offset of small fault-scarp alluvial fans. These displacementdata suggest a coseismic slip of 3 m in the last earthquake, or acumulative slip of 3 m in the past few earthquakes. A maximum slip of3 m correspond to a Mw 7 earthquake that ruptures about 49 km offault length. Using an average slip rate of 4.7 ± 1.3 mm/yr togetherwith a 3-m slip-per-event suggests a maximum earthquake recurrence intervalof this fault segment of 500 to 885 years.