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Tectonostratigraphic evolution of Enjefa’s marginal marine Holocene deposits: highlighting the final stage of Kuwait’s emergence

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Abstract

The Enjefa Beach outcrop comprises marginal marine deposits that are scarcely studied and its facies architecture is largely unknown. With only a few outcrops left in Kuwait, this locality provides an opportunity to better understand the interaction between tectonics and sedimentary processes during the late Holocene, unraveling the final uplift and emergence of Kuwait. Detailed facies analysis revealed that Enjefa outcrop is composed of shoreface and tidal channel facies associations, stacked in a shoaling-upward sequence. One hundred forty-nine paleocurrent measurements were taken at the Enjefa and surrounding areas to understand depositional trends. 2D-structural restoration of seismic data crossing the Ahmadi Ridge was performed along with burial history analysis of a well drilled on the crest of the structure. Facies analysis revealed that the Enjefa outcrop is composed of six depositional facies. These are middle shoreface, upper shoreface, foreshore, lateral accretion, tidal channel, and channel fill/abandonment facies. It is observed that all lateral accretion packages exhibit a unidirectional northern trend. Tectonostratigraphic time-laps simulation revealed that the Ahmadi Ridge final uplift had a direct influence on the tidal channel migration patterns, resulting in a dominant northern migration direction. These results are found to correlate with other Arabian Gulf regions, indicating a regional extent of the late Holocene tectonics.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Schlumberger and Kuwait Oil Company for the support they gave to this work. Special thanks go to Dr. Homoud Anzi from Saudi Aramco for his fruitful discussions and encouragement during and after our fieldwork. The authors would like to extend their gratitude to Dr. Martin Wells and Dr. Roger Davies for their review and remarkable suggestions to improve this work.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Schlumberger, Houston, TX, USA

    Aimen Amer

  2. Kuwait Oil Company, Al Ahmadi, Kuwait

    Mesha Al-Wadi, Hanan Abu-Habbial & Abdulaziz Sajer

Authors
  1. Aimen Amer
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  2. Mesha Al-Wadi
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  3. Hanan Abu-Habbial
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  4. Abdulaziz Sajer
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Correspondence to Aimen Amer.

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Amer, A., Al-Wadi, M., Abu-Habbial, H. et al. Tectonostratigraphic evolution of Enjefa’s marginal marine Holocene deposits: highlighting the final stage of Kuwait’s emergence. Arab J Geosci 11, 712 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12517-018-4070-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12517-018-4070-9

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