Basin Architecture and Evolution of the Gulf of Aqaba

By

 Abdelwahab Noufal¹

(1) Cairo University, Cairo, Egypt

 The Gulf of Aqaba represents arm of the Red Sea, separating between Saudi Arabia and the Sinai Peninsula. It varies in width from 19 to 27 km and is 160 km long. The gulf lies in a pronounced cleft between hills rising abruptly to about 600 m. The Aqaba strike-slip fault system, perhaps the world's finest natural laboratory for investigating the different stages of development of strike-slip basins, the least understood of all basin types. This study will integrate structural mapping, paleostress analysis, and structural techniques to examine the diverse origins of strike-slip related basins in the Gulf of Aqaba.

The Aqaba fault system is characterized by Late Cenozoic Arabian-Nubian shield trantensinal reactivation of Palaeozoic basement terranes in an intercontinental, intraplate region. Seismically active strike-slip and oblique-slip faults cut the region and bound uplifted blocks that are the sediment source areas for adjacent alluvial basins. Internally drained basins exist in various stages of development from juvenile to mature in association with the regional fault network.

This work will be a multi-disciplined investigation of the complex spatial and temporal relationships between facies distribution and faulting, which exist during basin evolution in a tectonically active intracontinental setting. This paper was supported standard paleostress techniques, including structural methods, detailed mapping of deformed clastic sedimentary successions and brittle fault analysis. The aim of the fieldwork was to gain a three-dimensional picture for the tectonic system that have operated in theAqaba basins through time, and to understand the interplay between faulting, basin margin deformation, facies distribution and architecture, and adjacent mountain building.