Talk:Dead Sea Transform

New material

Didn't look before I bumped it up to B class for WP Earthquakes & WP Geology, and only realized afterwards that it had already been moved up a notch. I think that was too modest, as all the new information, the style of writing, and the myriad sources all align with the assessment guidelines perfectly. This, for example, "Readers are not left wanting", and this "A few aspects of content and style need to be addressed" are B-class criteria. Anyway, probably wouldn't have changed it had I realized it'd already been re-assessed, but now was compelled to at least say why the change was made. Dawnseeker2000 01:55, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

"Highly contested"

I have found no evidence in the literature that the origin of the DST is currently "highly contested". The references to the spreading centre theory are quite old, and all the more recent papers support the transform nature of the DST, albeit with some transtension in the south and some transpression in the north. Mikenorton (talk) 20:26, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

I agree with Mikenorton that the tectonic regime here is not "highly contested". Just about everyone, including the old papers that support the idea of an incipient spreading center, agree that "it as a transform fault that accommodates a 105 km northwards displacement of the Arabian Plate," beginning in the early Miocene. The only debated interpretation is that of the rifted valleys along the southern transform as an incipient spreading center, and that has not been supported in the literature since the early nineties. To some extent, this isn't even a debate, since the two views are not mutually exclusive. Researchers agree that transtension led to pull-apart basins and eventually significant crustal thinning. This is the same set of processes that occur before a new spreading center develops. But not every rift forms a spreading center, and until the rift either fails or initiates seafloor spreading, the surface tectonics will look (basically) the same. Presenting the 'debate' does a disservice to the science that we do know. Elriana (talk) 14:45, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

To be completely fair, Yossi Mart is still holding with his view that the whole of the DST is a rift system [1]. However, this is not the consensus view and could be covered very briefly in the article. The tectonic development model section should probably be extended to cover the views of those who think that the whole of the DST was formed at the same time, rather than a two-stage propagation model as described in that section at the moment, even though evidence for pre-Pliocene movement seems to be lacking. I meant to do that when I expanded the article, but ran out of steam. I ended up reading so many papers that I found it difficult explain the various options clearly. Mikenorton (talk) 21:34, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

Ah, I had missed that 2004 paper. Still, advances in tomography [2] and geodetics [3] directly contradict Yossi Mart's assertions about a lack of evidence for lateral motion. My opinion: The debate in the last 10-15 years seems to be more about the processes associated with and definition of rifting than it is about the past/current motions in the Dead Sea. We don't entirely understand how rifting initiates or why some plate boundaries turn into spreading centers and others don't. Since the dead sea is clearly not a spreading center at this time, and we don't fully understand the processes that could make it one, any debate over the issue seems highly speculative. Regardless, 'highly contested' is a poor choice of words, given how much is uncontested about the tectonics in this area. Elriana (talk) 15:12, 10 July 2015 (UTC)

There's not much doubt I think, but I've reworked the section - splitting into a tectonic interpretation and a separate development history. I've given the consensus view, but mentioned the alternative. I still need to generalise the development section, although I have yet to find a critical review of the age of the northern part of the DST. All the recent papers seem to be in agreement that the northern section formed in the Late Miocene to Pliocene. Mikenorton (talk) 12:17, 11 July 2015 (UTC)

A Transform Fault?

I'm not really sure about the correctness of the term, since transform faults are the ones apparently displacing segments of an oceanic ridge. The link to the voice 'Transform fault' correctly addresses this. This should rather be named a strike-slip fault, along which two plates move in opposite direction. A. Possenti (Italy) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.147.196.116 (talk) 15:07, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

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Dubious data in the lead

@Dawnseeker2000, Mikenorton, and Elriana: hi. The lead makes two statements that look a bit too Israel-centered, in my opinion. Here they are:

• "...left lateral motions along the fault of approximately 107 km." I doubt it's uniform along the entire length. I think it's rather: a maximum of 107 km at its S end, and less further N. Does anyone know for sure?
• "...a series of depressions, or pull-apart basins, forming the Gulf of Aqaba, Dead Sea, Sea of Galilee, and Hula basins." What about the Beqaa Valley? Nothing further N, all the way to SE Turkey? N.b.: a basin/depression mustn't be a body of water.

Thanks, Arminden (talk) 15:01, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

The estimated offset is a maximum at the southern end as you rightly say - I'll look to see if any better estimates have become available since I expanded the article in 2013, particularly in other parts of the DST. The Bekaa valley is a broadly synclinal basin lying between the Mount Lebanon Range and the Anti-Lebanon Range. It is mostly not fault bounded. The only other significant pull-part basin on the DST system is the "Ghab Basin" in the northernmost part of the DST in northern Syria, within an otherwise transpressional zone, but it should probably be mentioned in the lead section. The southern part of the DST in contrast is almost entirely transtensional, reflecting the plate vectors. Mikenorton (talk) 11:09, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

Finally got around to attempting a rewrite of that part of the lead section. Mikenorton (talk) 16:37, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

Relation to the Jordan Rift Valley

It seems to me that the two geological (tectonic) terms and the geographical term Jordan Valley sometimes confuse people and categories get mixed up.

Are the N and S boundaries of the Dead Sea Transform and the Jordan Rift Valley as given by their enWiki articles? So is the latter just a large segment of the former? Does the latter refer to tectonics, while the former is more geomorphology-related?

The geographical term Jordan Valley seems to hardly ever include the upper course of the river, which is often covered by the term Hula Valley, which is of a vague nature (tectonic? Geographical? Covering much more than the historical Hula Lake? See talk-page there). That makes everything even more confusing. Arminden (talk) 17:06, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

The problem is that the Jordan Rift Valley is an outmoded concept, but it's proved impossible to find any sources that say that (although time to take another look I suppose), it's just been quietly dropped as the understanding of the DST has changed, much as with the Great Rift Valley. Knowing this doesn't help that much I find, as sources continue to use the name anyway. I will have another go at sorting this out, but I make no promises. Mikenorton (talk) 16:55, 16 November 2023 (UTC)