Dead Sea Transform

The Dead Sea Transform is a left-lateral strike-slip fault system separating the Arabian Plate from the African Plate. It runs from the Gulf of Aqaba northward through the Levant to southern Turkey.

Strike-slip fault: A fault on which blocks of crust move mainly sideways past one another. The transform’s principal motion is horizontal, with the eastern side moving north relative to the western side.
Arabian Plate: A tectonic plate carrying the Arabian Peninsula and adjacent regions. Its northward motion relative to Africa drives displacement along the transform.
Wadi Araba: A desert valley extending between the Dead Sea and the Gulf of Aqaba. This section of the transform contains a prominent active fault trace.
Divergent boundary: A plate boundary where two tectonic plates move apart. The Red Sea Rift is divergent, unlike the transform’s predominantly sideways motion.
Left-lateral fault: A strike-slip fault where the opposite block appears to move left across the fault. This describes the Dead Sea Transform’s sense of horizontal motion.
African Plate: A major tectonic plate comprising most of Africa and adjoining oceanic crust. The transform marks its boundary with the Arabian Plate in the Levant.
Jordan Valley: A long tectonic valley extending from the Sea of Galilee toward the Dead Sea. The transform follows this valley through Jordan and Israel.
Convergent boundary: A plate boundary where two plates move toward one another. The transform does not primarily consume or stack crust as convergent boundaries do.
Pull-apart basin: A basin formed where displacement along a strike-slip fault creates localized extension. Bends and stepovers along the transform produce subsiding basins, including the Dead Sea basin.
Plate tectonics: The theory that Earth's outer shell consists of moving lithospheric plates. The transform is a plate boundary whose motion is part of global plate tectonics.

Linked from 11 pages