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Impact of inherited structures on present-day tectonics of the northern Red Sea and its western onshore area in Egypt: evidence from 3D gravity inversion and seismicity

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Abstract

We use the harmonic gravity inversion to image the crustal structures beneath the northern Red Sea and its onshore area in Egypt (Central Eastern Desert, CED) and to explore the origin of their seismicity. Modeled vertical sections show that the CED has strongly heterogeneous continental crust dominated by NW-SE- to NNW-SSE-oriented density-low anomalies that indicate highly fractured areas of the crust. In contrast, a prominent density-high anomaly is observed at 10–40 km depth along the Red Sea rift, representing shallow hot anomalous upper mantle. A NW-SE-oriented density-high at 25 km depth in the CED west of Safaga represents crustal thinning associated with extension of the African Plate. Density slices at 2–40 km depths show the effect of Precambrian, ENE-oriented structures in the continental crust on the alignment of young volcanoes and magma chambers in the northern Red Sea. These Precambrian structures acted as channels through which magma was intruded and were reactivated in some areas like Abu Dabbab, Marsa Alam, and the Nile Valley forming earthquake belts. Our 3D density model, when combined with updated gravity data and seismic tomography, offers better resolution for deep structures than the previous 2D forward results and serves as a physical property reference to better understand the structure beneath the Red Sea area.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Prof. Dr. Hans-Jürgen Götze, Christian-Albrechts-Universitätzu Kiel InstitutfürGeowissenschaften, for constructive comments that improved the manuscript. We would also like to express our gratitude to the World Gravity Mapping Project (WGM) team for the Bouguer gravity data and the World Digital Magnetic Anomaly Map (WDMAM) project team for providing the magnetic datasets of the present work.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Research Institute of Astronomy and Geophysics, NRIAG, Helwan, 11421, Egypt

    Salah Saleh

  2. Department of Geology, Ain Shams University, Cairo, 11566, Egypt

    Adel R. Moustafa

  3. Geophysical Division, Earth Science Institute, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Dúbravská cesta 9, P.O. Box 106, 840 05, Bratislava, Slovakia

    Vladimír Pohánka

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  1. Salah Saleh
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Correspondence to Salah Saleh.

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Saleh, S., Moustafa, A.R. & Pohánka, V. Impact of inherited structures on present-day tectonics of the northern Red Sea and its western onshore area in Egypt: evidence from 3D gravity inversion and seismicity. Arab J Geosci 14, 1250 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12517-021-07626-x

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