Quaternary landscape evolution driven by slab-pull mechanisms in the Granada Basin (Central Betics)

Abstract

The Granada Basin is one of the largest Neogene-Quaternary intramontane basins of the Betic Cordillera in SE Spain. The landscape evolution in this basin is complex and does not respond to a simple model of headward erosion following river capture of a former endorheic catchment. In the NE border of the basin, the drainage network is highly incised and reveals two different stages of river development since the Pleistocene. The older drainage network presents low incision, being locally controlled by ENE-WSW open folds. The present-day drainage network features deep incised valleys with a well-defined local base-level controlled by NW-SE normal faults. The ENE-WSW open folds were generated by compressional stresses and affect a geomorphic surface that caps the local sedimentary sequence. These folds are thought to reactivate a Pliocene roll-over formed in the hanging wall of ENE-WSW normal faults that bound the Granada Basin to the north and the deepest Pliocene depocenter. On the contrary, Quaternary depocenters are located in the hanging wall of the NW-SE–oriented normal faults that control the present-day drainage network (NW-SE oriented). The activity of these faults also contributes to the erosion of the Pliocene depocenter located to the north, thus suggesting a southwestward migration of the loci of extension to the center of the basin. The broad-scale scenario envisaged to explain the Pliocene–Quaternary evolution of the NE border of the Granada Basin is one dominated by mantle slab-pull coeval with the Africa–Iberia continuous convergence.