Uplift and active tectonics of southern Albania inferred from incision of alluvial terraces

Abstract

International audienceIn Albania, the Osum and Vjoje rivers cross the active graben system and the active frontal thrust system of the Albanides. The effects of climatic and geodynamic forcing on the development of these two rivers were investigated by the means of field mapping, topographic surveying and absolute exposure-age dating. We established the chronology of terraces abandonment from the compilation of new dating (14C and in situ produced 10Be) and previously published data. We identified nine fluvial terraces units developed since Marine Isotope Stage 6 up to historic times. From this reconstituted history, we quantified the vertical uplift on a time scale shorter than the glacial climatic cycle. Regional bulging produces an overall increase of the incision rate from the west to the east that reaches a maximum value of 2.8 m/ka in the hinterland. Local pulses of incision are generated by activation of normal faults. The most active faults have a SW–NE trend and a vertical slip rate ranging from 1.8 to 2.2 m/ka. This study outlines the geodynamic control in the development of rivers flowing through the Albanides on the scale of 103–105k

Holocene flooding and climate change in the Mediterranean

“…2; Table 1), which for the purposes of this review includes mainland Greece (Fuchs and Lang, 2001;Wagner, 2003, 2005;Jing and Rapp, 2003;Koukouvelas et al, 2001;Lespez, 2003;Pavlides et al, 2004;Pope and Wilkinson, 2006) and islands (Booth, 2010;Deckers, 2005;Maas, 1998;Maas et al, 1998;Macklin et al, 2010;Zacharias et al, 2009), Albania (Carcaillet et al, 2009), Turkey (Beach and Luzzadder-Beach, 2008;Casana, 2008) and Israel (Goldberg, 1984;Greenbaum et al, 2000). It is the most seismically active region of the Mediterranean (Stiros, 2009) and has significant hydrological variability with average annual rainfall ranging from more than 1500 mm in the Pindus Moutains of north-west Greece to less than 200 mm in the hyper-arid catchments of southern Israel.…”

Rates of river incision across the main tectonic units of the Pamir identified using optically stimulated luminescence dating of fluvial terraces

“…However, the interpretation of incision rates in terms of relative bedrock uplift rates or climatic control is debated. It requires careful evaluation of intrinsic effects of the studied fluvial systems such as timescale dependencies or river channel evolution (e.g., Burbank et al, 1996;Leland et al, 1998;Carcaillet et al, 2009;Pan et al, 2009;Vandenberghe et al, 2011;Finnegan et al, 2014).…”

Daljinska istraživanja kao preliminarna metoda za otkrivanje aktivnih tektonskih struktura: primjer albanskog orogena

“…The fault lines were derived by geophysical/ geological methods and were taken from the official geological Albanian cartography (Xhomo et al, 1999;Xhomo et al, 2002). The fault lines have been updated with the ones taken from the maps of Aliaj et al (2000), Carcaillet et al (2009), Velaj (2011. The result was the summary of the "state of the art" of the underground active structures in the chosen area 3 ;…”

“…The same figure also features a map showing the location of the studied area in the Balkans (Fig. 1A), with reference to the principal geological/ structural areas in the territory (Carcaillet et al, 2009). …”