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Active tectonics of the western Mediterranean: Geodetic evidence for rollback of a delaminated subcontinental lithospheric slab beneath the Rif Mountains, Morocco

¹ Mohammadia School of Engineering, Department of Civil Engineering, LAPR, Ibn Sina Avenue, 765 Agdal, Rabat, Morocco
² Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA
³ Department of Geological Sciences, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri 65211, USA
⁴ Mohammadia School of Engineering, Department of Civil Engineering, LAPR, Ibn Sina Avenue, 765 Agdal, Rabat, Morocco
⁵ Abdelmalek Essaadi University, Department of Geology, 93002 Tangier, Morocco
⁶ Department of Terrestrial and Planetary Dynamics, CNRS, 31400 Toulouse, France
⁷ Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Snee Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853, USA

Surface deformation in Morocco, derived from five years of global positioning system (GPS) survey observations of a 22-station network, four continuously recording GPS (CGPS) stations, and four International GNSS Service (IGS) stations in Iberia, indicates roughly southward motion (3 mm/yr) of the Rif Mountains, Morocco, relative to stable Africa. Motion of the Rif is approximately normal to the direction of Africa-Eurasia relative motion, which is predominantly strike slip, and results in shortening of the Rif and subsequent crustal extension of the adjacent Alboran Sea region. The sense, and the N-S asymmetry of the observed deformation (i.e., no evidence for north-directed shortening in the Betic Mountains north of the Alboran Sea) cannot be easily explained in terms of crustal plate interactions, suggesting that dynamic processes below the crust are driving the recent geologic evolution of the western Mediterranean. The model that best fits the observations involves delamination and southward rollback of the African lithospheric mantle under the Alboran and Rif domains.

Key Words: GPS • active tectonics • Alboran Sea • continental dynamics

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