The tectonic history of the Pre-Saharan depression (Morocco) a geomorphological interpretation

Abstract

During the Cretaceous and Tertiary periods the Pre-Saharan depression between Ouarzazate and Errachidia was an area of deposition in a spatially and chronologically highly differentiated pattern. The variable structural and tectonic history of this region in also reflected in its denudational development. Until the late Pliocene/early Pleistocene the western part (Ouarzazate basin) was a depositional basin for lacustrine and alluvial sediments. Pediment formation did not start before the Pleistocene period. In the central part of the depression (between Boumalne and Tinerhir) denudational activity on cuesta scarps started already in the late Miocene to early Pliocene as can be deduced from a new dating of the Foum el Kous volcano (2.9 my) and from Djebl Sarhro gravels on the crest of the Paleogene scarp. In the easternmost part of the depression (between Goulmima and Errachidia) there are no Neogene sediments, and the calculations of rates of scarp retreat demonstrate that scarp backwearing must have begun in the late Eocene. Thus the shift from depositional to erosional activity in the Pre-Saharan depression ranges from the late Eocene to the Pleistocene. This is at the same time an expression of its complex tectonic history.