Print this pageOne of the main types of structural traps which hosts ore deposits, groundwater, or oil and gas accumulations, is the en echelon structures of strike-slip faults. Understanding the stepover process and the transfer of strain from strike-slip to dip-slip faults is critical to understanding how pullapart basins form. This proposal seeks funds to conduct field research along part of the Dead Sea Transform (DST) where a major strike-slip fault terminates and strain is accommodated on four oblique-slip faults. The DST plate boundary, marked by rhomb-shaped grabens and en echelon strike-slip faults, formed when the Arabo-African plate broke up in the Miocene, resulting in a cumulative sinistral displacement of about 105 km. The goal of this research is to study in detail the structural relationship of the Wadi Araba fault to oblique-slip and normal faults in Aqaba, Jordan in order to model the neotectonic deformation history of an active, pullapart basin. These faults cut the Quaternary stratigraphic section at the north end of the Gulf of Aqaba (Elat). This research will involve: 1) interpretation of aerial photographs currently available at UMKC, 2) bulldozer excavation and mapping of the fault exposures, 3) collection of structural orientation data, and 4) kinematic and dynamic analyses of fault data.
The study will help determine the degree to which adjacent blocks either converge or diverge during the strike-slip movement as well as the magnitude of the displacement. This doctoral research will offer some preliminary conclusions regarding the structural pattern and the growth of an actively subsiding pullapart basin.
AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90925©1999 AAPG Foundation Grants-in-Aid