Salt-controlled slumping on the Mediterranean slope of central Israel

The highly complex morphology of the continental slope of central Israel is the expression of deep-seated rotational block slumping. The overburden of 1.0–1.5 km thick Pliocene-Quaternary sediments that accumulated over 200 m thick evaporites deposited under the deeper portion of the present-day continental slope and in Late Miocene erosion channels, caused the evaporites to flow downslope. This flowage was presumably caused by excessive pore pressures generated by the Pliocene-Quaternary sedimentary overburden in confined layers of clastics embedded within the impervious evaporites.