Plio-Quaternary tectonic evolution of the southern margin of the Alboran Basin (Western Mediterranean)

Lafosse, Manfred; d'Acremont, Elia; Rabaute, Alain; Estrada, Ferran; Jollivet-Castelot, Martin; Vazquez, Juan Tomas; Galindo-Zaldivar, Jesus; Ercilla, Gemma; Alonso, Belen; Smit, Jeroen; Ammar, Abdellah; Gorini, Christian

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/se-11-741-2020

Articles | Volume 11, issue 2

https://doi.org/10.5194/se-11-741-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/se-11-741-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 11, issue 2

Research article

|

30 Apr 2020

Research article |

| 30 Apr 2020

Plio-Quaternary tectonic evolution of the southern margin of the Alboran Basin (Western Mediterranean)

Manfred Lafosse, Elia d'Acremont, Alain Rabaute, Ferran Estrada, Martin Jollivet-Castelot, Juan Tomas Vazquez, Jesus Galindo-Zaldivar, Gemma Ercilla, Belen Alonso, Jeroen Smit, Abdellah Ammar, and Christian Gorini

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Final revised paper (published on 30 Apr 2020)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 26 Jul 2019)

Interactive discussion

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AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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SC1: 'Review', Emanuele Lodolo, 03 Sep 2019
- RC2: 'SC again as RC', Emanuele Lodolo, 10 Sep 2019
  - AC1: 'Answer to the referee 1', Manfred Lafosse, 13 Nov 2019
RC1: 'Referee comment', Jacques Déverchère, 06 Sep 2019
- AC2: 'answer to the referee 2', Manfred Lafosse, 13 Nov 2019

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

AR by Manfred Lafosse on behalf of the Authors (08 Jan 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (09 Jan 2020) by Federico Rossetti

RR by Guillermo Booth-Rea (29 Jan 2020)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The manuscript "Plio-Quaternary tectonic evolution of the southern margin of the
Alboran Basin (Western Mediterranean)" presents new high quality and well interpreted seismic sections of the southwestern Alboran basin that deserve publishing. Although, I find that the results obtained from the interpretation are not justified entirely. To start with, the data presented is mostly post-late Miocene and thus, results written in the abstract corresponding to the earlier Miocene evolution are not supported by the data presented here.
No evidence of extensional or strike-slip structures active before the Tortonian are shown in this manuscript. Furthermore, the western Alboran basin, the object of this work, is not a back-arc basin. It is located in a fore-arc position, to the west of the volcanic arc (Booth-Rea et al., 2007; 2018; Gómez de la Peña et al., (2018).

Booth-Rea, G., C. Ranero, J. M. Martínez-Martínez, and I. Grevemeyer (2007), Crustal types and Tertiary tectonic evolution of the Alborán sea, western Mediterranean, G-Cubed, 8, Q10004, doi: 10010.11029/12007GC001661.

Booth-Rea, G., C. R. Ranero, and I. Grevemeyer (2018), The Alboran volcanic-arc modulated the Messinian faunal exchange and salinity crisis, Scientific Reports, 8.

de la Peña, L. G., C. R. Ranero, and E. Gracia (2018), The Crustal Domains of the Alboran Basin (Western Mediterranean), Tectonics, 37(10), 3352-3377.

In the abstract please be more precise with the Tortonian age. The Tortonian represents a long time period between 11.6 and 7.2 Ma. Furthermore, the Tortonian was the period with largest tectonic subsidence (Rodríguez-Fernández et al., 1999) and arc related magmatism in the Alboran basin and also onshore (e.g. Duggen et al., 2008). Tectonic subsidence that was mostly related to extensional tectonics (Booth-Rea et al., 2004a, Giaconia et al., 2014).

Booth-Rea, G., J. M. Azanon, and V. Garcia-Duenas (2004), Extensional tectonics in the northeastern Betics (SE Spain): case study of extension in a multilayered upper crust with contrasting rheologies, J Struct Geol, 26(11), 2039-2058.

Duggen, S., K. Hoernle, A. Klugel, J. Geldmacher, M. Thirlwall, F. Hauff, D. Lowry, and N. Oates (2008), Geochemical zonation of the Miocene Alboran Basin volcanism (westernmost Mediterranean): geodynamic implications, Contrib Mineral Petr, 156(5), 577-593.
Giaconia, F., G. Booth-Rea, J. M. Martínez-Martínez, J. M. Azañõn, F. Storti, and A. Artoni (2014), Heterogeneous extension and the role of transfer faults in the development of the southeastern Betic basins (SE Spain), Tectonics, 33(12), 2467-2489.

Rodríguez Fernández, J., M. C. Comas, J. Soria, J. A. Martín Pérez, and J. I. Soto (1999), The Sedimentary Record of the Alboran Basin: an Attempt at Sedimentary Sequence Correlation and Subsidence Analysis, in Proc. ODP Sci. Results, edited by R. Zahn, M. C. Comas and A. Klaus, pp. 69-76.
In the abstract, conclusions and discussion I miss other alternative tectonic mechanism for explaining the evolution of your studied region.
Is there no other tectonic mechanism acting in the area apart from plate convergence? Many papers confer a role in the tectonics of the Western Alboran region to the underlying Alboran slab (e.g. González-Castillo et al., 2015; Mancillla et al., 2015; Heit et al. 2017, Spakman et al., 2018; Capella et al., 2019; Sun and Bezada, in press). Other alternatives to only plate convergence should be discussed in the paper.
Gonzalez-Castillo, L., J. Galindo-Zaldivar, M. C. de Lacy, M. Borque, F. J. Martinez-Moreno, J. A. Garcia-Armenteros, and A. J. Gil (2015), Active rollback in the Gibraltar Arc: Evidences from CGPS data in the western Betic Cordillera, Tectonophysics, 663, 310-321.
Heit, B., Mancilla, F. D. L., Yuan, X., Morales, J., Stich, D., Martín, R., & Molina‐Aguilera, A. (2017). Tearing of the mantle lithosphere along the intermediate‐depth seismicity zone beneath the Gibraltar Arc: The onset of lithospheric delamination. Geophysical Research Letters, 44(9), 4027-4035.
Mancilla, F. L., G. Booth-Rea, D. Stich, J. V. Pérez-Peña, J. Morales, J. M. Azañón, R. Martin, and F. Giaconia (2015), Slab rupture and delamination under the Betics and Rif constrained from receiver functions, Tectonophysics, 663, 225-237.

Spakman, W., Chertova, M. V., van den Berg, A., & van Hinsbergen, D. J. (2018). Puzzling features of western Mediterranean tectonics explained by slab dragging. Nature Geoscience, 11(3), 211-216.
Sun, M., & Bezada, M. Seismogenic necking during slab detachment, evidence from relocation of intermediate depth seismicity in the Alboran slab. Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth.
Introduction:
The Alboran tectonic domain has been recently redefined as only the upper plate of the Betic-Rif internal zones (Booth-Rea et al., 2015; Jabaloy et al., 2018). Most of the basement of your studied region probably does not correspond to the Alboran domain, being formed by para-autochthonous low-grade metamorphic rocks of the Maghrebian Rif units or by volcanic accretion (e.g. Azdimousa et al., 2018; Gomez de la Peña et al., 2018).
Azdimousa, A., A. Jabaloy-Sánchez, P. Münch, J. M. Martínez-Martínez, G. Booth-Rea, M. Vázquez-Vílchez, L. Asebriy, J. Bourgois, and F. González-Lodeiro (2018), Structure and exhumation of the Cap des Trois Fourches basement rocks (Eastern Rif, Morocco), J Afr Earth Sci, in press.
Slab tearing or detachment in the region occurred during the Late Miocene until Recent (e.g. García-Castellanos and Villaseñor, 2009; Mancilla et al., 2015), not during the Early Miocene.
This discussion is not exactly a discussion. For it to be so, you need to discuss other alternative ideas to yours, which you have previously mentioned in the introduction. Here there is no mention to the tectonic effects that a deep slab could have in your studied area, for example. Please rewrite this section citing and considering other possibilities, instead of only considering plate convergence as the sole driver for deformation in the region.
Please see more detailed comments in the attached annotated PDF file.
Best wishes,
Guillermo Booth Rea

Referee Report: PDF

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RR by Jacques Déverchère (03 Feb 2020)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The authors have addressed with great care the points raised by the two referees in their review. Regarding my own remarks, I am fully satisfied by the answers provided by the authors and congratulate them for their extensive comments and their careful revision of the text. Especially, their new table and the accurate comparison with the observations by Perea et al. (2018) allow the reader to better highlight their inputs compared to previous studies recently published in the area and further strengthen their proposition of palinspastic-tectonic evolution over the last 5 Ma.
Regarding the question on the cause for the recent (Pleistocene) reorganization of the Alboran domain, I fully agree with the authors that a kinematic change is difficult to assess, following the conclusion by De Mets et al. (2015) that “such a rapid change in plate motion may imply implausibly rapid changes in the torques that are acting on one or both plates”. Actually, I did not want to question this point. The authors are also right to say that checking such a change at the scale of the Mediterranean basin is beyond the scope of their paper, as also to launch a detailed discussion on the role played by changes of internal body forces. My aim was only to suggest the authors to open the discussion to alternative explanations than the one provided by block-shelf rotation models in map view. Regarding the latter, considering the southern part of the Alboran domain, there are indeed several lines of evidence of dextral motions along E-W or ESE-WNW structures offshore up to the Oranese region. However, the present-day strain field further east on land (Cheliff, Mitidja basins) do not support a major role played by dextral faults there (Bougrine et al., 2019), but instead suggests an oblique shortening across the Tell-Atlas of less than ∼2 mm. This is in contrast with paleomagnetic studies over the last 16 Myr that supports finite clockwise rotations in the Tell Atlas (Derder et al., 2019*). My point here was therefore to urge the authors to be careful not to apply finite deformation models to Pleistocene and active strain models to the whole north African margin. Whatever the case, I agree with the conclusion of the authors about the tectonic evolution of the SAR and the Rif during Plio-Quaternary times, from transpressive to transtensive on the Al-Idrissi fault and the Nekor Basin, followed by transpression of the SAR and progressive indentation of the Alboran domain east of the Al-Idrissi fault, as well summarized on Figure 15. Therefore, I have no more objection on this topic.
All the other points raised in my previous review have been addressed in a way that is convincing and quite professional in my view. I have no further comments to make. The deep work of revision makes the final text and figures a high-quality contribution. Again, I congratulate the authors for their efforts. The only requirement I have is about the need for some technical corrections on the English language : there are still remaining mistakes that should be easy to address. I recommend a thorough proofreading to correct English errors.

*Derder, M. E. M., Djellit, H., Henry, B., Maouche, S., Amenna, M., Bestandji, R., et al (2019). Strong neotectonic block‐rotations, related to the Africa‐Eurasia convergence in northern Algeria: Paleomagnetic evidence from the Mitidja basin. Tectonics, 38. https://doi.org/10.1029/2018TC005394

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (03 Feb 2020) by Federico Rossetti

AR by Manfred Lafosse on behalf of the Authors (17 Feb 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (21 Feb 2020) by Federico Rossetti

Dear Authors,
many thanks for this further round of revision.

Before the final acceptance, I went through your revised manuscript and despite I found it significantly improved, it needs further work of revision.
The major critical issues regard:
(i) The Introduction section. As it stands, it results as rather chaotic in its structure with overlapping information and somehow repetitive. This should instead clearly present the scientific problem and how the study is intended to contribute to the advancement of knowledge. The first paragraph should be removed (see detailed comments in the edited ms.)
(ii) Results. Some parts are unnecessary and often data presentation mixes with inferences and this should be avoided. Some text can be removed without loosing information.
(iii) Discussion section. It needs re-organisation and editing. Specific points regard: (1) Table 1: it needs to be introduced early in the discussion, (2) inconsistencies regarding structural terms and definition (i.e., line 209); (3) lines 309-315, where it is not easy to follow the rationale (i.e., which the meaning of "switch from left-lateral transpressive to compressive strike-slip"). How the transpression and transtension regimes are defined? Block rotations are proposed, but which the evidence? The text is not fully intelligible (see detailed comments in the text); (4) lines 398-415 are out of context and do not add much to the manuscript. A revision is needed to better link with the above text or it should be removed.
I have provided an annotated version of the typescript were these points are further detailed. Please also check comments on the Table 1, figures and captions.
Additional critical points regard: (i) an excessive usage of acronyms, often not adequately introduced; (ii) all the localities and nominated structures should be indicated in the Figures. Authors are thus demanded to carefully cross check correspondence between text and figures; (iii) despite I am not a native English speaker, I found the text rather rough in some part. Revision of the English text is therefore compulsory.

Looking forward for a suitably revised version,

Sincerely,
Federico Rossetti

Comments to the Author: PDF

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AR by Manfred Lafosse on behalf of the Authors (28 Feb 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (03 Mar 2020) by Federico Rossetti

AR by Manfred Lafosse on behalf of the Authors (10 Mar 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (11 Mar 2020) by Federico Rossetti

ED: Publish as is (11 Mar 2020) by Federico Rossetti (Executive editor)

AR by Manfred Lafosse on behalf of the Authors (18 Mar 2020)

Short summary

The Alboran Sea is one of the most active region of the Mediterranean Sea. There, the basin architecture records the effect of the Africa–Eurasia plates convergence. We evidence a Pliocene transpression and a more recent Pleistocene tectonic reorganization. We propose that main driving force of the deformation is the Africa–Eurasia convergence, rather than other geodynamical processes. It highlights the evolution and the geometry of the present-day Africa–Eurasia plate boundary.