Direklo-Mehdikhan Alkaline Basalt District, an Indication of a Quaternary Continental Within Plate Extensional Mechanism

Abstract

Introduction The Direklo-Mehdikhan volcanic district is the largest volcanic region within the Qorveh-Bijar Quaternary volcanic belt, located near Qorveh in Kurdistan province, Iran. The Qorveh-Bijar Quaternary basic volcanic belt lies between the provinces of West Azerbaijan and Kurdistan, within the Sanandaj-Sirjan zone as a segment of the AlpineHimalayan Orogeny with a Gondwana-affinity basement. The Orogeny is strongly influenced by the Middle-Late Tertiary post-orogenic development that followed the continental collision between the Arabian and Eurasian plates. Following the collision, the SSZ continental lithosphere was thickened (Agard et al., 2005), leading to a lithospheric thickness of ~150–170 km (Priestley and McKenzie, 2006). In this district, the deposits of pyroclastic origins and scoria, which erupted from a thick lithosphere, are covered by alkaline basic lava flows (Neill et al., 2015). The primary objective of the present study is to provide evidences for the subduction of the Neotethys oceanic plate beneath the Eurasian margin and the collision of the Arabian plate. Therefore, this study focuses on the Direklo-Mehdikhan volcanic district. © The Author(s).