Dead Sea Transform
A component of shortening affects the Lebanon restraining bend, leading to uplift on both sides of the Beqaa valley.
[7] The Dead Sea Transform began to form during the Late Eocene with epeirogenic movement in the region, with the start of the faulting phase beginning in the Oligocene and continuing into the Miocene.
The initial phase of northward propagation reached as far as southernmost Lebanon and was followed by a period in the Late Miocene where continuing displacement across the plate boundary was taken up mainly by shortening in the Palmyra fold belt.
In the Pliocene the DST propagated northwards once more through Lebanon into northwestern Syria before reaching the East Anatolian Fault.
The Gulf of Aqaba was created by movement on four left-stepping strike-slip fault segments in a diagonal stepwise sequence known as echelon formation.
[11] The Wadi Arabah (Arava Valley) segment of the DST extends for about 160 km from the Gulf of Aqaba to the southern end of the Dead Sea.
The Avrona fault extends from the northern part of the Gulf of Aqaba for about 50 km along the Arava Valley.
[14] The Dead Sea is formed in a pull-apart basin due to the left-stepping offset between the Wadi Arabah and Jordan Valley segments.
[15] The Dead Sea basin is of particular interest due to its title as the lowest land-based elevation on Earth.
[17] This hypothesis states that a heavy magmatic piece of lithosphere has lodged itself in the Moho boundary near the center of the Dead Sea, partitioning stress to the edges of the basin and allowing deeper earthquakes.
The central site of the basin's deepest sedimentary fill (its "depocentre" in geologists' jargon) lies on the eastern side, against the continuation of the Jordan valley fault.
The thickness of the fill is estimated as 3 km down to the deepest mapped seismic reflection, correlated with the top of a basalt layer that was extruded about four million years ago.
It is SSW-NNE trending and runs for about 170 km from the northwestern end of the Hula Basin to its junction with the Missyaf Fault.
The over all deformation style is transpressional, in keeping with the relative plate motions as determined from GPS measurements.
Major historical earthquakes interpreted to have occurred along this structure include the Mw>7 events in AD 115 and 1170.
Based on the interpretation of seismic reflection data and a single well penetration (Ghab-1) the fill of the basin is thought to be entirely Pliocene to recent in age.
