DESERT --- eine multinationale und interdisziplinäre Studie des Dead Sea Rifts

Abstract

The Dead Sea Rift / Dead Sea Transform acts as a hinge between the Alpine-Himalayan-Mountain Belt, stretching East-West from the Mediterranean to Indonesia, and the largest active continental rift system, the Afro-Arabian Rift System, which runs South-North from East Africa to the Dead Sea. Except for a mild compressional deformation starting about 180 Ma ago, the Dead Sea region has remained a stable platform almost since its formation in the late Proterozoic. This tectonic stability was only recently (ca. 18 Ma ago) interrupted by the formation of a transform with a left-lateral motion of about 105 km as of today. The simplicity of this system, especially in the Arava Valley, the valley between the Dead Sea and the Red Sea, puts it in strong contrast to other large transform systems like the North Anatolian Fault System, which is in the middle of an orogenic belt, and the San Andreas Fault System, which suffered repeated accretional episodes and the interaction with a triple junction. The simplicity