Descr: The Dead Sea Transform cuts through the northwestern flank of the Nubo-Arabian shield and, with a total of about 105 km multi-stage left-lateral shear since about 18 Ma ago, accommodates the movement between the Arabian plate and the African plate. It connects the spreading centre in the Red Sea with the Taurus collision zone in Turkey over a length of about 1100 km and consists of fault segments which show tremendously varying characteristics along strike. In its southern portion the most obvious variations are the interchanges of huge pull-apart basins e.g. the Dead Sea basin, with strands of strike-slip dominated, relatively simple shear zones. As part of the GEO-DESIRE project a wide-angle reflection / refraction (WRR) profile is planned across the southern Dead Sea basin to provide a P- and S-wave velocity cross section across the basin, to delineate variations in the major crustal interfaces across the basin, and especially to determine the amount of, if in fact there is any, crustal thinning beneath the basin itself. The profile which will be about 250 km long will cross the Dead Sea Transform at about 31°15’N. It is planned to run the line mainly along existing tracks and roads, most of which have already been driven. About 600 instruments will be required with about 200 3-component Earth Data Limited (EDL) recorders from the Geophysical Instrument Pool Potsdam and 400 1-component REFTEK R125A recorders hopefully from the PASSCAL instrument pool. Within the central 150 km of the profile a station spacing of about 300 m is envisaged while for the easternmost and westernmost 50 km a station spacing of 1-2 km sho! uld be achieved. On the source side it is proposed to have five large shots to image the whole crustal structure and about six intermediate small shots to provide details on the basement structure. The planned WRR profile will build on previous wide-angle seismic profiles parallel and perpendicular to the Dead Sea Transform, including those completed in 1977 in Israel and in 1984 in Jordan, the DESERT profile completed in 2000 in Israel, Jordan and the Palestine territories, as well as the new US Geological Survey profiles completed in autumn 2004.
