Tectonic wedge escape in the southwestern front of the Rif Cordillera (Morocco)

The Rif Cordillera is a part of the Alpine orogenic arc in the Western Mediterranean, which was developed by the interaction of the westward motion of the Alboran Domain between the converging Eurasian and African plates. The Prerif Ridges, located along the southwestern front of the Rif, are south-vergent folds that are in places associated with faults affecting Jurassic to Quaternary sedimentary rocks and slope breccias that evidence the deformations that were active over the Neogene-Quaternary period. The different southward or southwestward displacement of each Prerif Ridge is related to the development of frontal and lateral ramps, which may or may not reach the surface. Oblique shortening may be explained by southwestward escape of large tectonic wedges, bounded by large strike-slip faults: the North-Middle Atlas fault which extends northward into the Alboran Sea, the Fez-Tissa-Taineste fault, the Bou Draa-Sidi Fili fault, the Jebha fault and the Fatties fault. The relative displacement of these tectonic wedges toward the SW may explain the NNE-SSW to ENE-WSW compression observed in the Rif front and in the northern part of its Meseta-Atlas foreland.