Asia, Middle East, Coastal Morphology: Syria, Lebanon, Red Sea, Gulf of Oman, and Persian Gulf

Syria and Lebanon

The north and south Syro-Lebanese coast is situated on the western edge of the Arabic plate and runs parallel to the folded coastal mountain range of Ansarieh Jebel in Syria (1562 m) and the Lebanon mountains culminating at 3083 m. In Lebanon, the mountains descend abruptly to a deep sea, where the continental shelf is narrow but cut by erosional platforms of uniform depths (circa 15-20 m and 40-50 m below sea level). Nevertheless, except in the extreme north of Syria and at Ras Chekka in Lebanon, the cliffs are generally small (a few meters to about 30 m), because the slopes have been cut by erosional shelves of the Pleistocene shorelines (Vaumas, 1954).

In the north of Syria ophiolitic rocks out-crop, and the coast is wild and picturesque. Elsewhere carbonaceous rocks are almost exclusively found-mainly Cretaceous or Neogene limestones or dune or marine Quaternary calcarenites