Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface: Introduction and historical perspective
- 1 Methods and background
- 2 Alaska, Canada, Cascadia, and Eastern North America
- 3 San Andreas system and Basin and Range
- 4 Caribbean Plate and Middle America subduction zone
- 5 South America
- 6 Africa, Arabia, and Western Europe
- 7 Eastern Mediterranean, the Caucasus, and the Middle East
- 8 India, the Himalaya, Mainland China, and Central Asia
- 9 Japan and the Western Pacific
- 10 Southeast Asia, Australia, New Zealand, and Pacific Islands
- References
- Index
6 - Africa, Arabia, and Western Europe
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface: Introduction and historical perspective
- 1 Methods and background
- 2 Alaska, Canada, Cascadia, and Eastern North America
- 3 San Andreas system and Basin and Range
- 4 Caribbean Plate and Middle America subduction zone
- 5 South America
- 6 Africa, Arabia, and Western Europe
- 7 Eastern Mediterranean, the Caucasus, and the Middle East
- 8 India, the Himalaya, Mainland China, and Central Asia
- 9 Japan and the Western Pacific
- 10 Southeast Asia, Australia, New Zealand, and Pacific Islands
- References
- Index
Summary
Introduction
The Africa Plate is probably the best-preserved fragment of the former supercontinent, Pangea. Because it is surrounded on three sides (west, south, and east) by sea-floor spreading centers and is split in two by the East African Rift Valleys, the Africa Plate is growing. Only on the north is its boundary with structures around the Mediterranean Sea more complex, including a convergent margin with reverse faults, folds, and large earthquakes in Algeria and Morocco, and remnants of Neotethyan oceanic crust, part of the Africa Plate, being subducted in the central and eastern Mediterranean.
I have included in this chapter a description of the Arabia Plate east of the Red Sea, another part of Pangea with many similarities to Africa, with spreading centers to the west and south. The northern margin of Arabia is colliding with Eurasia along the Bitlis Suture and Palmyride fold belt in Iraq, Turkey, and Syria, and the Zagros Mountains of Iran and Iraq. That continental collision results in structures and earthquakes that are described in the following chapter, as is the Dead Sea transform fault (DST), the boundary between the Arabia and Africa plates north of the Red Sea.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Active Faults of the World , pp. 225 - 262Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2012