2014 SPA Contest - Alba Gil - New insights on the crustal thickness and its lateral variations beneath the Rif Cordillera, north Morocco

I am Alba Gil and I just finished my PhD, which was focused in the seismic structure of the crust beneath the Rif Cordillera, in north Morocco.

The Rif Cordillera (north Morocco) together with the Betic range (southern Spain), forms the Gibraltar Arc around the Alboran Sea (Figure 1). This arched orogenic belt was created by the collision between the Eurasian and African plates. One of the main problems of this region is the scarce information and results about the northern Morocco. Our research group wants to overcome this lack of information, with the data acquired by the Topo-Iberia and RIFSIS projects, which are presented in this study (funded by the Spanish Government; CSD2006-00041 and GCL2009-09727, respectively). The present work is based on the processing, modeling and interpretation of seismic data from RIFSIS, PICASSO and Topo-Iberia projects, and has been focused on the crust below Morocco, especially below the Rif Cordillera (Figure 1). Those results obtained from the different seismic methodologies reveal a crustal root in the central part of the Rif Cordillera (Figure 2). I interpreted the Rif Cordillera crustal structure as resulting from a complex interaction of the Miocene (23 Ma) to present continental-continental collision between Eurasian and African plates, coupled with rollback of the Neo-Tethys Alboran slab. It is expected that these results should deserve useful constraints for future geodynamic modeling on the Gibraltar Arc System evolution.