Compression Folds and a Strike-Slip Fault in Flowing Evaporites, Red Sea

In the Red Sea, evaporites deposited from the Mid Miocene up to the end of the Miocene. This chapter shows a map of the study area showing interpreted multibeam sonar bathymetry with seismic reflection lines marked. The 25 m-resolution multibeam echosounder data in this figure reveal giant flows of evaporites, where buttressing of the evaporites has been reduced by active rifting in the axial spreading centre running down the centre of the Red Sea. A 2D seismic line shown from the central Red Sea is interpreted with the aid of folds and faults visible in multibeam sonar data. In the image, a reflective Plio-Pleistocene (PP) sequence overlies a prominent reflector S. At the edge of the tectonic growth structure at shot point (SP) 280 a possible reverse fault occurs, suggesting that the folding has occurred because of local compression of the mobile evaporites, due to a reverse component on a strikeâEURslip fault.