In this award, the principal investigator will study the transition of the continental rifting to seafloor spreading in the Northern Red Sea. In an earlier grant, the PI studied the early rifting of the continental margins of the Northern Red Sea and acquired a large amount of geophysical data in the area. In this study, the PI proposes to integrate underway geophysical data from Exxon and ESP data from his French colleagues to his existing data base. The available Exxon data set is quite extensive, consisting of closely spaced multichannel seismic reflection profiles and gravity, magnetic and bathymetric data. The two ship ESP data collected by the French are also of good quality and indicate possible arrivals from the Moho. The interpretation of this increased data set will lead to the understanding of the mechanism of extension in space and time from the rift region to the sea floor spreading region in the Northern Red Sea and the conditions under which such a transition takes place. The theme of the research is of fundamental importance in plate tectonics. The structural and tectonic information gained from this project can also be used as constraints in thermal and mechanical modeling of the extension of lithosphere which leads to rifting.
