The Florence Rise, the Western Bend of the Cyprus Arc

The Florence Rise is a submarine feature extending from the island of Cyprus in the southeast to the Anaximander Mountains which form the northwestern end of the Cyprus Arc south of western Turkey. The eastern Florence Rise includes a topographic high near Cyprus while its central domain displays relatively low relief. Most of the major elements of relief appear to be bounded by faults, in the light of new geophysical data. An underlying 'core' ridge, likely made of pre-Pliocene nappes emplaced from the north, separates relatively undeformed sediments to the northeast from actively shearing sediments and seismic basement, to the southwest. A dextral arc-parallel wrench zone, at least 15 km wide, has created a lineated seafloor texture and accompanying flower structures within the central Florence Rise. Apparent Riedel type conjugate shears within this system cut across the Florence Rise and mark changes in the relief along the arc. Several mud volcanoes are observed within the wrench zone and along associated faults, indicating that overpressuring at depth is relieved by these faults. There is no evidence for any typical subduction along this arcuate trend, which is considered to act as the present boundary between the African and Anatolian-Aegean plates. In contrast, both the nature of faulting and the morphology of the Florence Rise seem to indicate some degree of transpressional coupling between the two plates, even though they appear disconnected by a tectonic boundary in the form of a major shear zone. © 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.