Transverse faults and segmentation of basins within the Dead Sea Rift

Abstract

The Dead Sea rift is a large transcurrent fault system extending from the Red Sea to Turkey. Several morphotectonic depressions of various sizes exist along its length. Most of them are divided into several sedimentary basins which are in turn divided into smaller units by transverse faults. Several transerve faults extend beyond the boundaries of the basins into areas which are otherwise unaffected by the rifting activity. In some cases the transverse faults are active at present as strike slip faults. In the Dead Sea area where multichannel seismic profiles are available across several transverse faults, there are indications that some of these faults have changed their mode of activity from normal to strike-slip faults during the evolution of the basins. The apparent uniform spacing between transverse faults (20–30 km) indicates that their location was, probably, not dictated by the location of oversteps in the en-echelon system of longitudinal faults. Rather, they may have formed to accommodate the internal deformation of the rapidly subsiding basins.