Large earthquakes kill coral reefs at the north‐west Gulf of Aqaba

Shaked, Yeala; Agnon, Amotz; Lazar, Boáz; Marco, Shmuel; Avner, Uzi; Stein, Mordechai

doi:10.1111/j.1365-3121.2004.00541.x

Cited by 39 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…Late Pleistocene uplift in the north-eastern Red Sea (Gvirtzman et al, 1992;Strasser et al, 1992;Gvirtzman, 1994;Bosworth and Taviani, 1996;Plaziat et al, 1998) is concentrated in the central part of the Gulf of Aqaba where uplift can be related to local faulting and the locus of recent seismic activity as shown by the last large earthquake in 1995 (Shaked et al, 2004;Shalaby and Shawky, 2014). Otherwise, the remaining sequences along the southern Red Sea coasts show no major uplift and generally suggest relative vertical tectonic stability during the late Pleistocene (Arvidson et al, 1994;Plaziat et al, 1998Plaziat et al, , 2008.…”

Section: Tectonic Historymentioning

confidence: 92%

Dating Quaternary raised coral terraces along the Saudi Arabian Red Sea coast

et al. 2016

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Late Pleistocene raised coral reef terraces form extensive outcrops up to 5 km wide along the Saudi coast. Porites coral were dated using U/Th while clastic sediment from Jeddah was dated using thermoluminescence. The pooled mean age for the coral samples is 121.5 ± 0.2 ka suggesting MIS 5e, even for the uplifted 16-20 m high terrace in the north at Haql. In Jeddah the MIS 5e back-reef succession is overlain by fluvial sediment that gave a TL age of 66 ± 13 ka. The structure and faunal composition of the coral terraces suggests that they accumulated in broad shallow embayments following the last interglacial transgression. The consistent elevation of these terraces suggests that the central and southern Saudi coast has been tectonically stable for at least the past 125,000 years and the coral reef terraces (at 3.5-5.5 m elevation) are consistent with the MIS 5e sea level high-stand that peaked at 6-9 m above present sea level. The Saudi coastal coral terrace north of Duba shows progressive uplift to 16-20 m near Haql since 108-120 ka as a result of ongoing transform faulting in the Gulf of Aqaba.

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Section: Tectonic Historymentioning

confidence: 92%

Dating Quaternary raised coral terraces along the Saudi Arabian Red Sea coast

et al. 2016

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“…The fault system can potentially cause earthquakes that would affect a large number of people in the adjacent countries. Different types of paleoseismic evidence along the Dead Sea Transform (DST) show that large earthquakes have occurred in the past tens of thousands of years, [e.g., Reches and Hoexter , 1981; Marco et al , 1996; Amit et al , 1999; Klinger et al , 2000a; Niemi et al , 2001; Meghraoui et al , 2003; Shaked et al , 2004; Kagan et al , 2005; Matmon et al , 2005; Ferry et al , 2007]. The pioneering works of El‐Isa and Mustafa [1986] and Marco and coauthors [ Marco and Agnon , 1995; Marco , 1996; Marco et al , 1996] on the intraclast breccia layers (originally termed “mixed layers”) in the late Pleistocene Lisan Fm.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Intrabasin paleoearthquake and quiescence correlation of the late Holocene Dead Sea

et al. 2011

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A comprehensive multisite paleoseismic archive of the late Holocene Dead Sea basin (past 2500 years) is established by constructing two age‐depth chronological models of two sedimentary sections exposed at the retreating shores of the modern Dead Sea. Two new paleoseismic study sites studied are the Ein Feshkha Nature Reserve outcrop located at the northern part of the basin and close to an active underwater transverse fault and the east Ze'elim Gully outcrop at the southern part of the basin. Age‐depth regression models are calculated for these sections based on atmospheric radiocarbon ages of short‐lived organic debris calibrated with a Bayesian model. The uncertainties on individual model ages are smaller than 100 years. The new chronological records are compared to a laminae‐counting study of the Ein Gedi core (Migowski et al., 2004) located at the central Dead Sea basin. The Ein Feshkha outcrop yielded the largest number of seismites in the studied time interval (n = 52), while lower numbers of seismites are recovered from the Ze'elim outcrop and Ein Gedi core (n = 15 and 36, respectively). The seismites show no strong dependence on the limnological‐sedimentological conditions in the particular sampling sites (they coappear in both shallow and deep water environments and in different sedimentary facies). During time intervals when the chronologies are comparable it appears that the number of seismites is significantly larger in the northern part of the basin (Ein Gedi and Ein Feshkha). Seismic quiescence intervals are apparent at all three sites from 2nd–4th century A.D. and at 500–150 B.C. at Ze'elim and Ein Gedi. Several synchronous seismites appear in all sections (termed here the intrabasin seismites (IBS)). Among them: 1927, 1293, 1202/1212, 749, 551, 419, and 33 A.D. and 31 and mid‐2nd century B.C. The recurrence time of the IBS from the 2nd century B.C. to the 14th century A.D. is ∼200 years, compared with ∼100 years for all earthquakes. On a diagram of epicentral distance versus magnitude, historic earthquakes that are correlated with IBS plot in a field of high local intensity. The farther and stronger IBS earthquakes require lower local intensities to be recorded. This study demonstrates that a painstaking effort is still needed for unraveling the seismic history of the Dead Sea basin. The results also indicate that such a study will likely be highly rewarding.

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“…By extrapolating the fault line, he speculated that the Elat Fault continues southward and becomes submarine ( Figure 3). Shaked et al [2004Shaked et al [ , 2010 argued that catastrophic earthquake events caused submergence and burial of reefs along the western coastline of Elat. They suggested that slip along a segment of the western boundary normal fault ( Figure 3) caused subsidence of 1.8 m in two seismic events in the past 5 ka.…”

Section: 1002/2013jb010879mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Figure 3. Geological map of the study area overlaid with the outline of major faults suggested in previous studies (modified after Garfunkel [1970], Reches et al [1987], Ben Avraham and Tibor [1993], Frieslander [2000, Niemi and Smith [1999], Slater and Niemi, [2003], Shaked et al [2004], Ehrhardt et al [2005], and Makovsky et al [2008]). AF = Aragonese fault.…”

Section: 1002/2013jb010879mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Quaternary tectonic evolution of the Northern Gulf of Elat/Aqaba along the Dead Sea Transform

et al. 2014

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The northern Gulf of Elat/Aqaba is located in the transition between the deep marine basins of the gulf and the shallow onland basins of the Arava Valley. Interpretation of 500 km of high-resolution seismic reflection data collected across the northern shelf reveals the tectonic structure and evolution of this transition. Six NNE-trending faults and one E-W trending transverse fault are mapped. Slip rates are calculated based on measured offsets and age determination based on a radiocarbon-calibrated sedimentation rate and a Quaternary age model. The most active fault is the Evrona Fault that absorbs most of the left lateral slip within the basin with an average sinistral slip rate of 0.7 ± 0.3 mm/yr through the Late Pleistocene and 2.3-3.4 mm/yr during the Holocene. Two intrabasin faults east of the Evrona Fault that have been inactive for the last several tens of thousands of years were mapped, and motion from these faults has likely transferred to the Evrona Fault. The basin is flanked on the west by the Elat Fault and on the east by the Aqaba Fault. Both faults are marked by large bathymetric escarpments. Based on displaced seismic reflectors, we calculate a Holocene vertical slip rate of 1.0 ± 0.2 and 0.4 ± 0.1 mm/yr for the Elat and Aqaba Faults, respectively. The geometry, slip rates, and slip history of the northern Gulf of Elat/Aqaba faults show that during the Late Pleistocene several intrabasin faults became dominant across the basin but that during the Holocene the Evrona Fault accommodates most of the strike slip.

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Large earthquakes kill coral reefs at the north‐west Gulf of Aqaba

Cited by 39 publications

References 34 publications

Dating Quaternary raised coral terraces along the Saudi Arabian Red Sea coast

Dating Quaternary raised coral terraces along the Saudi Arabian Red Sea coast

Intrabasin paleoearthquake and quiescence correlation of the late Holocene Dead Sea

Quaternary tectonic evolution of the Northern Gulf of Elat/Aqaba along the Dead Sea Transform

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