Quantitative paleotopography and paleogeography around the Gibraltar Arc (South Spain) during the Messinian Salinity Crisis

Quantifying the erosional impact of a continental-scale drainage capture in the Duero Basin, northwest Iberia

“…Digital elevation models (DEMs) and geologic and geomorphological information from geographic information systems (GIS) provide a relatively easy and rapid way to obtain high-resolution, quantitative, and georeferenced databases to re-create ancient landscapes. Several approaches, using different gridding techniques, can be used to reconstruct previous landforms (Tew and Mancini, 1995; Leverington et al, 2002; Amato et al, 2003; Pérez-Peña et al, 2009; Geach et al, 2014), to decipher paleo-shoreline positions (Elez et al, 2016) or erosional landscapes (Benito-Calvo and Pérez-González, 2007; Benito-Calvo et al, 2008), and to estimate the dimensions and morphology of bodies of water and landforms to constrain hydrological models (DeVogel et al, 2004; García-Rodríguez et al, 2014). In this paper, we apply these techniques to quantify past fluvial dissection and basin denudation.…”

Quantification of Erosion and Uplift in a Rising Orogen—A Large-Scale Perspective (Late Tortonian to Present): The Case of the Gibraltar Arc, Betic Cordillera, Southern Spain

“…This is the case for the Western-Central Betic Cordillera (WCBC), an arcuate mountain range c. 300 km long (i.e., Gibraltar Arc; Figure 1A), with particular paleogeographic evolution linked to the emergence of the Betic Cordillera during the Late Messinian, which triggered the separation of the Atlantic and Mediterranean basins, promoting the "Messinian Salinity Crisis" in the Mediterranean (MSC) [19][20][21][22][23] and the later catastrophic Zanclean flooding, e.g., [24][25][26]. This unique geological catastrophe has been revealed as a valuable scenario to explore large-scale mountain erosion and related onshore uplift rates during a well-delimited geological time interval, e.g., [17,27,28]. One of the consequences predicted and partially explored along with the MSC at the Mediterranean scale is regional isostatic uplift along the basin margins due to the evolving mass balance between source areas and basins [29].…”

“…The Gibraltar Arc, located in the western edge of the Mediterranean basin, underwent an important asymmetry in the base level erosion and therefore on the fluvial incision, enhanced in the Mediterranean slope (Figure 2) [15,17]. The relevant drawdown occurred during the MSC, leading to a noticeable enlargement of the previously small fluvial basins around the Mediterranean with the removal of millions of cubic meters of rocks, resulting in the overall uplift of the Betic Cordillera and the rapid continentalization of the existing small marine basins [28], which was nearly completed in the studied area during the Late Zanclean period [27,30]. The distribution of late Tortonian-early Messinian shallow marine sequences and related geomorphological markers (mainly uplifted abrasion surfaces) around the Atlantic and Mediterranean slopes of the Betic orogen indicates an important differential uplift between both slopes, as shown by a study of one of the largest fluvial basins in the area, that of the Guadalhorce basin [28].…”

“…The relevant drawdown occurred during the MSC, leading to a noticeable enlargement of the previously small fluvial basins around the Mediterranean with the removal of millions of cubic meters of rocks, resulting in the overall uplift of the Betic Cordillera and the rapid continentalization of the existing small marine basins [28], which was nearly completed in the studied area during the Late Zanclean period [27,30]. The distribution of late Tortonian-early Messinian shallow marine sequences and related geomorphological markers (mainly uplifted abrasion surfaces) around the Atlantic and Mediterranean slopes of the Betic orogen indicates an important differential uplift between both slopes, as shown by a study of one of the largest fluvial basins in the area, that of the Guadalhorce basin [28]. The preliminary analysis of the area suggests that Late Neogene sea level markers are nowadays at elevations of 1.300-900 m above the sea level in the Mediterranean slope (Sierra Nevada), but below 200 m in the Atlantic zone, suggesting a dramatic E-W asymmetric uplift along the entire Gibraltar Arc [20,28,30,31], and maybe throughout the whole Mediterranean-Atlantic water divide within the Iberian Peninsula (Figure 1) [15].…”

Configuration and Evolution of the Landscape from the Geomorphological Map in the Natural Parks Batuecas-Quilamas (Central System, SW Salamanca, Spain)

“…The application of GIS has allowed a great development of the study of active processes and its application to geological risk cartographies (landslides, floods, etc.) [6][7][8][9][10][11]. The evolutionary analysis of the landscape from geomorphological cartography generates synthetic cartographies, elaborated from basic or parametric cartographies that facilitate the environmental and sustainable planning of the territory, where the landscape is a resource to value and to preserve.…”