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The Morphotectonic Structure of the Lower Jordan Valley – an Active Segment of the Dead Sea Rift

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The Morphotectonic Structure of the Lower Jordan Valley – an Active Segment of the Dead Sea Rift EGU Stephan Mueller Special Publication Series, 2, 95–103, 2002 c European Geosciences Union 2002 The morphotectonic structure of the lower Jordan Valley – an active segment of the Dead Sea Rift S. Belitzky Department of Geophysics and Planetary Sciences, Tel Aviv University, Israel (Email: [email protected]) Received: 7 November 2000 – Revised: 16 January 2002 – Accepted: 29 January 2002 Abstract. The pioneering morphotectonic study of young remote sensing images. Relatively poor exposure of the ge- structures and movements in the central segment of the Dead ological formations and paucity of geophysical information Sea Rift, along the lower Jordan Valley, included analysis of prompted emphasis on tectonic geomorphology of the re- the relief, drainage network, and remote sensing images. The gion. Whenever it was possible, the results of the morphotec- Dead Sea Rift is the major transform along which the Ara- tonic analysis were integrated with geological, geophysical, bian plate has moved sinistrally with respect to the African hydrological and archeological data. plate about 100 km from the Neogene to the Recent. The The Dead Sea Rift is the 1000 km long major transform lower Jordan Valley surface is covered by the late Pleistocene that links the Red Sea spreading area with the Zagros-Taurus Lisan lacustrine Formation and by the Holocene clastic de- zone of plate convergence along which the Arabian plate has posits. The transform in the lower Jordan Valley is composed moved sinistrally with respect to the African plate (Fig. 1). of three major segments: northern Kinnarot, southern Jeri- The accumulated horizontal displacement is about 100 km cho, and the connecting them Malih. The Kinnarot and the dating from Neogene to Recent (Garfunkel et al., 1981). Jericho segments were formed under transtension and both Because of this, kinematic analysis of the Dead Sea Rift trend N-S; in them elongated pull-apart basins have devel- has focused on horizontal rather than vertical displacements. oped. In these basins clastics and evaporites were accumu- Where it is obvious, young vertical deformation was at- lating since the Late Miocene. The NNE-trending Malih seg- tributed to local variations in patterns of the transform faults ment was formed under transpression that formed the Malih and generation of local stress fields due to lateral displace- uplift. Uplifted and subsided areas identified along the lower ments such as pull-aparts and push-ups. The kinematic Jordan Valley indicate vertical rather than lateral motions: model (Joffe and Garfunkel, 1987) suggests that neotectonic almost no evidence of lateral displacement was found there. deformation in the lower Jordan Valley is influenced by re- Dominance of vertical motions suggests that the neotectonic gional as well as by local strain fields. The regional defor- regime was governed by continuous N-S extension of the mation is induced by NE tension and NW compression. The Israel-Sinai plate and by transverse movements during the original, parallel to the transform, direction of the Arabian Arabian plate “escape”. Locations of earthquakes are con- plate motion changed slightly about 5 MY ago and includes centrated in the Shomeron Triangle. This can be explained counter-clockwise rotation relatively to the Israel-Sinai plate. by rejuvenation of the Triangle faults induced by ongoing N- As a result of the change, diagonal compression was in- S extension of the Sinai sub-plate. N-S extension on the west duced in the Lebanon segment of the transform, while trans- results in decrease of the rate of the lateral motion along the verse tension component (transtension) was induced along transform in the lower Jordan Valley. the southern segment, from the Red Sea to the Northern Jor- dan Valley. This tensional component produced transverse extension of several kilometers and the morphotectonic val- 1 Introduction ley configuration. While the kinematic model of Joffe and Garfunkel (1987) This work is based on the results of the morphotectonic study provides a general conceptual framework for interpretation (Belitzky, 1996) of the young structures and motions in the of the transform development history, many details of the central segment of the Dead Sea Rift that stretches from the plate boundary and kinematics still are not clear. As a re- Dead Sea to the Kinneret Lake (Fig. 1) along the lower Jor- sult, there is major discrepancy between observed structural dan Valley. The study included analysis of relief, drainage pattern and predicted by geodynamic models. This paper network, pattern of sediment removal and accumulation, and presents the summary of the tectonic geomorphology study 96 S. Belitzky: The morphotectonic structure of the lower Jordan Valley Fig. 1. Location map of the study area. that was conducted with purpose to find reasons for the dis- Indeed, paleomagnetic studies (Ron et al., 1984; Baer and crepancy. Mimran, 1993; Achmon, 1997) showed extremely complex In the Dead Sea Rift, the direction of the plate bound- pattern of deformation of the Sinai sub-plate to the north ary changes several times, and the areas of transpression of the Dead Sea. Non-rotating domains, bounding rotat- and transtension were formed along the transform (Belitzky, ing ones, suggest the presence of strike-slip between them. 1996). Mechanical properties of the plates are different Morphotectonic studies (Belitzky, 1996) and seismic activ- (Reches, 1987), and there are numerous structures that orig- ity (Salamon et al., 1996) show that contemporaneous defor- inated in the pre-transform period. Some of these structures mation occur mostly to the west of the Dead Sea transform. are active and exhibit recent seismic activity (Salamon et al., There are only few lateral movements and that fact is con- 1996). Seismic efficiency of the Dead Sea transform is very trary to what it should be expected. low (about 7%); moderate seismic activity that spread out in The lower Jordan Valley is the morphotectonic depression wide belts reflects the complexity of deformation along the that is bordered on the east and the west by faults and flex- plate border (Salamon et al., 1996). ures. The lower Jordan Valley stretches about 105 km. The The lower Jordan Valley segment bounds on the east the valley floor (Ghor, Fig. 2) slopes gradually from 210 m be- northern portion of the Sinai sub-plate (Salamon et al., 1996). low MSL (mean level of the Kinneret Lake) to about 414 m This portion of the Sinai sub-plate, to the north of the Dead below MSL (the current level of the Dead Sea). The width Sea, was formed in one of the most complicated areas of the of the lower Jordan Valley varies from 10 km on the north to Dead Sea Rift, in the area of coherent plates breakup, in front 4–5 km in Wadi Malih area to 25 km in the area of the north- of the plate collision zone to the north (Ben-Avraham et al., ern shore of the Dead Sea. The morphotectonic depression of 1996). the lower Jordan Valley was filled with continental and ma- This situation produces structural complexity that is com- rine sediments. Zemah-1 well that was drilled in the northern pounded even more by superposition of the Rift shoulder de- portion of the Valley penetrated more than four kilometers of formation processes (Belitzky, 1996; Matmon et al., 1999). the rift fill: evaporites, igneous and clastic rocks (Marcus S. Belitzky: The morphotectonic structure of the lower Jordan Valley 97 Lake Kinneret LEGEND Massada Ghor Adasiya Settlement I I I I Gesher I I Uplift I Yardena I Morphologically inversed uplift I I Depression Bet Shean Flexure I I I III Normal fault I I I I I I I I Strike-slip fault (sinistral) n I o i I g e I r Fault (unknown displacement) I n r I e e W. Malih I n h i t I L Ridge r o I m N e I h I k e I h I S I I I I I I I I I I I Dir Alla I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I Fariya n I I o I I i I g e I r I I I n I r I e I I h I I t I I u I o I el Marmala S I I Zahret I I I I el-Qurein I I I I I Fatza'el I I I I I I I I I II II I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I Mandasa I S amra I I I I I I I I I Allenby I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I 0510 15 Km I I I I I I I I I Dead S ea Fig. 2. Map of morphostructures of the lower Jordan Valley. 98 S. Belitzky: The morphotectonic structure of the lower Jordan Valley and Slager, 1985). In the Latest Quaternary, the rift was cov- transform faults. On the west, transverse faults do not split ered by the brakish to hypersaline Lisan Lake. At the end off the transform faults and do not bend. Most of these faults of the Pleistocene the Lisan Lake shrunk and retreated from are eastward extensions of the faults of the lower Jordan Val- the northern part of the lower Jordan Valley to the Dead Sea ley western shoulders. area (Horowitz, 1978; Weinstein-Evron, 1993). Several me- ters of red silty sediments (Fatza’el Mbr.; Horowitz, 1979) were deposited in fresh water bodies in morphological lows 3 Major segments of the lower Jordan Valley that were formed after the retreat of the Lisan Lake.
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