Shmulik Marco The School of Geosciences

Seismites are layers that record earthquake-triggered off-fault deformation.

We have been studying seismites in the form of breccia layers since the early 1990s when I worked on Lisan Formation outcrops with Amotz Agnon (my PhD supervisor) and Moti Stein.

Additional research addressed seismites in the form of clastic dikes and displaced coral reefs in the Gulf of Elat-Aqaba.

Publications related to seismites

  1. Marco, S., and Agnon, A., 1995. Prehistoric earthquake deformations near Masada, Dead Sea graben. Geology, 23: 695-698. pdf
  2. Marco, S., Stein, M., Agnon, A., and Ron, H., 1996. Long term earthquake clustering: a 50,000 year paleoseismic record in the Dead Sea Graben. J. Geophys. Res., 101: 6179-6192. pdf
  3. Ken-Tor, R., Agnon, A., Enzel, Y., Marco, S., Negendank, J. F. W., and Stein, M., 2001. High-resolution geological record of historic earthquakes in the Dead Sea basin. J. Geophys. Res., 106: 2221-2234. pdf
  4. Ken-Tor, R., Stein, M., Enzel, Y., Agnon, A., Marco, S., and Negendank, J. F. W., 2001. Precision of calibrated radiocarbon ages of historic earthquakes in the Dead Sea Basin. Radiocarbon, 43: 1371-1382. pdf
  5. Nadel, D., Belitzky, S., Boaretto, E., Carmi, I., Heinemeier, J., Werker, E., and Marco, S., 2001. New dates from submerged Late Pleistocene sediments in the southern Sea of Galilee, Israel. Radiocarbon, 43: 1167-1178. pdf
  6. Shaked, Y., Agnon, A., Cohen, C., Lazar, B., Marco, S., Sass, E., and Stein, M. 2002. Late Holocene shorelines at the Gulf of Elat: Migrating shorelines despite tectonic and sea level stability. EGS Stephan Mueller Special Publication Series 2:105-111. pdf
  7. Marco, S., Weinberger, R., and Agnon, A., 2002. Radial clastic dykes formed by a salt diapir in the Dead Sea Rift, Israel. Terra Nova, 14:288-294. pdf
  8. Marco, S., and Agnon, A., 2005. Repeated earthquake faulting revealed by high-resolution stratigraphy. Tectonophysics 408 (1-4):101-112. pdf
  9. Shaked, Y., Agnon, A., Lazar, B., Marco, S., Avner, U. and Stein, M., 2004. Large earthquakes kill coral reefs at the NW Gulf of Aqaba. Terra Nova, 16(3): 133-138. pdf
  10. Heifetz, E., Agnon, A. and Marco, S., 2005. Soft sediment deformation by Kelvin Helmholtz Instability: A case from Dead Sea earthquakes. Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 236:497-504. pdf
  11. Levi, T., Weinberger, R., Aifa, T., Eyal, Y. and Marco, S., 2006. Earthquake-induced clastic dikes in the Dead Sea rift detected by anisotropy of magnetic susceptibility. Geology, 34(2):69-71. pdf
  12. Agnon, A., Migowski, C., and Marco, S., 2006, Intraclast breccia layers in laminated sequences: recorders of paleo-earthquakes, in Enzel, Y., Agnon, A., and Stein, M., eds., New Frontiers in Dead Sea Paleoenvironmental Research: Geological Society of America Special Paper 401. pdf
  13. Levi, T., Weinberger, R., Aïfa, T., Eyal, Y., and Marco, S., 2006, Injection mechanism of clay-rich sediments into dikes during earthquakes: Geochemistry, Geophysics, and Geosystems, Volume 7(12) (Q12009) doi:10.1029/2006GC001410. pdf
  14. Wechsler, N., Katz, O., Dray, Y., Gonen, I., and Marco, S., 2008, Estimating location and size of historical earthquake by combining archaeology and geology in Umm-El-Qanatir, Dead Sea Transform: Natural Hazards, 50:27-43 (DOI: 10.1007/s11069-008-9315-6). pdf
  15. Hamiel Y, Amit R, Begin ZB, Marco S, Katz O, Salamon A, Zilberman E, Porat N (2009) The seismicity along the Dead Sea fault during the last 60,000 years. Seismological Society of America Bulletin 99:2020-2026 (DOI: 10.1785/0120080218) pdf
  16. Katz A, Agnon A, Marco S (2009) Earthquake-induced barium anomalies in the Lisan Formation, Dead Sea Rift valley, Israel. Earth Planet. Sci. Lett. (doi:10.1016/j.epsl.2009.06.031) pdf
  17. Leroy, S.A.G., Marco, S., Bookman, R., and Miller, C.S., 2009, Impact of earthquakes on agriculture during the Roman-Byzantine period from pollen records of the Dead Sea laminated sediment: Quaternary Research. doi:10.1016/j.yqres.2009.10.003. pdf
  18. Wetzler, N., Marco, S., and Heifetz, E., 2010, Quantitative analysis of seismogenic shear-induced turbulence in lake sediments: Geology, v. 38 (4), p. 303-306.  doi: 10.1130/G30685.1 pdf
  19. Alsop, G. I., and Marco, S., 2011, Soft-sediment deformation within seismogenic slumps of the Dead Sea Basin: Journal of Structural Geology, v. 33, no. 4, p. 433-457. doi:10.1016/j.jsg.2011.02.003 pdf
  20. Alsop, G. I., and Marco, S., 2012, A large-scale radial pattern of seismogenic slumping towards the Dead Sea Basin: Journal of the Geological Society, v. 163, no. 1, p. 99-110. doi:10.1144/0016-76492011-032. pdf
  21. Shaked, Y., Lazar, B., Marco, S., Stein, M., and Agnon A., 2012, Late Holocene events that shaped the shoreline at the northern Gulf of Aqaba recorded by a buried fossil reef: Israel J. Earth Sci, v. 58, no. 3-4, p. 355-368. DOI: 10.1560/IJES.58.3–4.355  pdf
  22. Alsop, G. I., and Marco, S., 2012, Tsunami and seiche-triggered deformation of offshore sediments: Sedimentary Geology, v. 261–262, p. 90–107. doi:10.1016/j.sedgeo.2012.03.013 pdf
  23. Clark, K. J., Cochran, U. A., Berryman, K. R., Biasi, G., Langridge, R., Villamor, P., Bartholomew, T., Litchfield, N., Pantosti, D., Marco, S., Van Dissen, R., Turner, G., Hemphill-Haley, M., and Barker, D. H. N., 2013, Deriving a long paleoseismic record from a shallow water Holocene depocentre on the Alpine fault, New Zealand: GSA Bulletin, DOI: 10.1130/B30693.1. pdf
  24. Alsop, G. I., and Marco, S., 2013, Seismogenic slump folds formed by gravity-driven tectonics down a negligible subaqueous slope: Tectonophysics, 605, p. 48-69. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tecto.2013.04.004  pdf
  25. Alsop, G.I., Marco, S., 2014, Fold and fabric relationships in temporally and spatially evolving slump systems: A multi-cell flow model, Journal of Structural Geology v. 63 p. 27-49, doi: 10.1016/ j.jsg.2014.02.007 (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191814114000455#) pdf
  26. Marco, S., Katz, O., and Dray, Y., 2014, Historical sand injections on the Mediterranean shore of Israel: evidence for liquefaction hazard: Natural Hazards, V. 74(3), p. 1449-1459. DOI 10.1007/s11069-014-1249-6. pdf
  27. Jacoby, Y., Weinberger, R., Levi, T., and Marco, S., 2014, Clastic dikes in the Dead Sea Basin as indicators of local site amplification: Natural Hazards, DOI 10.1007/s11069-014-1392-0 pdf
  28. Alsop, G.I., S. Marco, R. Weinberger, T. Levi 2016, Sedimentary and structural controls on seismogenic slumping within mass transport deposits from the Dead Sea basin. Sedimentary Geology, doi: 10.1016/j.sedgeo.2016.02.019. pdf
  29. Lu, Y., Waldmann, N., Ian Alsop, G., and Marco, S., 2017, Interpreting soft sediment deformation and mass transport deposits as seismites in the Dead Sea depocenter: Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth, pdf
  30. Kagan, E., Stein, M. & Marco, S. (2018). Integrated paleoseismic chronology of the last glacial Lake Lisan: from lake-margin seismites to deep-lake mass-transport deposits. Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth, 123. https://doi.org/10.1002/2017JB014117  pdf
  31.