Davide Oppo , Christopher Aiden-Lee Jackson , Vittorio Maselli

Predicting the distribution of sedimentary facies during the early stages of deformation of salt-detached continental margins is key to constraining the location and stratigraphic architecture of hydrocarbon and CO₂ reservoirs, as well as understanding the oceanic carbon cycle. Despite its importance, we still have a relatively poor understanding of salt-sediment interactions during the early phases of extensional salt tectonics, mainly because subsequent salt-related deformation and/or deep burial of the related stratigraphic succession means the related deposits are poorly imaged in seismic reflection data and/or not penetrated by borehole data. Using 3D seismic reflection data from the northern Levant Basin offshore Lebanon, here we investigate the interplay between early extension-related salt deformation and deep-water sediment dispersal. Our results indicate that salt tectonics has two contrasting impacts: whereas slope-parallel faults favor early sediment transfer along downslope-oriented corridors to the abyssal plain, slope-normal faults and ramp-syncline basins trap land-derived sediments hampering or delaying their transport to the abyssal plain. These results help refine source-to-sink models of turbidite systems developing in young salt basins, highlighting the crucial role of extensional tectonics in controlling sediment dispersal and the development of intra-slope depocenters, and emphasizing the impact of fault strike, ramp-syncline basin evolution, and salt thinning. Our study has significant implications for predicting the location of deep-water coarse-grained sediment and the preservation of land-derived organic carbon in mature, more structurally complex salt basins.