The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa, and on the east by the Levant in West Asia. The Mediterranean has played a central role in the history of Western civilization. Geological evidence indicates that around 5.9 million years ago the Mediterranean was cut off from the Atlantic and was partly or completely desiccated over a period of some 600,000 years during the Messinian salinity crisis before being refilled by the Zanclean flood about 5.3 million years ago.
Morocco is the northwesternmost country which spans from the Mediterranean Sea and Atlantic Ocean on the north and the west respectively, into large mountainous areas in the interior, to the Sahara desert in the far south. Morocco is a Northern African country, located in the extreme northwest of Africa on the edge of continental Europe. The Strait of Gibraltar separates Spain from Morocco with a 13 kilometres (8.1 mi) span of water. Morocco borders the North Atlantic Ocean to the west, and the western Mediterranean Sea to the north, and has borders with Algeria and disputed Western Sahara.
Spain is a country located in southwestern Europe occupying most of the Iberian Peninsula. It also includes a small exclave inside France called Llívia, as well as the Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean, the Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean 108 km (67 mi) off northwest Africa, and five places of sovereignty on and off the coast of North Africa: Ceuta, Melilla, Islas Chafarinas, Peñón de Alhucemas, and Peñón de Vélez de la Gomera.
The Strait of Gibraltar is a narrow strait that connects the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea and separates Europe from Africa. The two continents are separated by 13 kilometres of ocean at the Strait's narrowest point between Punta de Tarifa in Spain and Point Cires in Morocco. Ferries cross between the two continents every day in as little as 35 minutes. The Strait's depth ranges between 300 and 900 metres.
The Alhucemas Islands is a group of islands and one of the Spanish plazas de soberanía just off the Moroccan coast in the Alboran Sea.
The plazas de soberanía are a series of Spanish overseas minor territories scattered along the Mediterranean coast bordering Morocco in Africa, or that are closer to Africa than Europe. This term is used for those territories that have been a part of Spain since the formation of the modern country (1492–1556), as opposed to African territories acquired by Spain during the 19th and early 20th centuries in the Scramble for Africa.
The Rif or Riff, also called Rif Mountains, is a geographic region in northern Morocco. It is bordered on the north by the Mediterranean Sea and Spain and on the west by the Atlantic Ocean, and is the homeland of the Rifians and the Jebala people. This mountainous and fertile area is bordered by Cape Spartel and Tangier to the west, by Berkane and the Moulouya River to the east, by the Mediterranean to the north, and by the Ouergha River to the south. The Rif mountains are separated into the eastern Rif mountains and western Rif mountains.
The Baetic System or Betic System is one of the main systems of mountain ranges in Spain. Located in the southern and eastern Iberian Peninsula, it is also known as the Cordilleras Béticas or Baetic Mountains. The name of the mountain system derives from the ancient Roman region of Baetica, one of the Imperial Roman provinces of ancient Hispania.
The Messinian salinity crisis was a geological event during which the Mediterranean Sea went into a cycle of partial or nearly complete desiccation (drying-up) throughout the latter part of the Messinian age of the Miocene epoch, from 5.96 to 5.33 Ma. It ended with the Zanclean flood, when the Atlantic reclaimed the basin.
In biogeography, the Mediterranean Basin, also known as the Mediterranean Region or sometimes Mediterranea, is the region of lands around the Mediterranean Sea that have mostly a Mediterranean climate, with mild to cool, rainy winters and warm to hot, dry summers, which supports characteristic Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub vegetation. It was a very important part of Mediterranean civilizations.
The Middle Atlas is a mountain range in Morocco. It is part of the Atlas mountain range, a mountainous region with more than 100,000 km2, 15 percent of its landmass, rising above 2,000 metres. The Middle Atlas is the northernmost and second highest of three main Atlas Mountains chains of Morocco. To south, separated by the Moulouya and Um Er-Rbiâ rivers, lies the High Atlas. The Middle Atlas form the westernmost end of a large plateaued basin extending eastward into Algeria, also bounded by the Tell Atlas to the north and the Saharan Atlas to the south, both lying largely in Algeria. North of the Middle Atlas and separated by the Sebou River, lie the Rif mountains which are an extension of the Baetic System, which includes the Sierra Nevada in the south of Spain. The basin of the Sebou is not only the primary transportation route between Atlantic Morocco and Mediterranean Morocco but is an area, watered by the Middle Atlas range, that constitutes the principal agricultural region of the country.
The Atlantic sawtail catshark is a little-known species of catshark, part of the family Scyliorhinidae, found in a small area of the northeastern Atlantic Ocean, centered on the Strait of Gibraltar and the Alborán Sea. It is found on or close to the bottom over the continental slope, mostly at depths of 400–600 m (1,300–2,000 ft). This shark closely resembles, and was once thought to be the same species as, the blackmouth catshark ; both are slender with a series of dark saddles and blotches along the back and tail, and a prominent crest of enlarged dermal denticles along the dorsal edge of the caudal fin. It differs subtly from G. melastomus in characters including snout length, caudal peduncle depth, and the color of the furrows at the corner of its mouth.
The geology of the Iberian Peninsula consists of the study of the rock formations on the Iberian Peninsula, which includes Spain, Portugal, Andorra, and Gibraltar. The peninsula contains rocks from every geological period from the Ediacaran to the Quaternary, and many types of rock are represented. World-class mineral deposits are also found there.
The Gibraltar Arc is a geological region corresponding to an arcuate orogen surrounding the Alboran Sea, between the Iberian Peninsula and Africa. It consists of the Betic Cordillera, and the Rif. The Gibraltar Arc is located at the western end of the Mediterranean Alpine belt and formed during the Neogene due to convergence of the Eurasian and African plates.
The Azores–Gibraltar Transform Fault (AGFZ), also called a fault zone and a fracture zone, is a major seismic zone in the Eastern Atlantic Ocean between the Azores and the Strait of Gibraltar. It is the product of the complex interaction between the African, Eurasian, and Iberian plates. The AGFZ produced these large-magnitude earthquakes and, consequently, a number of large tsunamis: 1755 Lisbon, 1761 Lisbon, 1816 North Atlantic, 1941 Gloria Fault earthquake, 1969 Horseshoe and 1975.
The Intercontinental Biosphere Reserve of the Mediterranean is the first of its type to be designated by the Man and the Biosphere Programme. It combines the Tingitan Peninsula in Morocco and the southern Iberian Peninsula of Andalusia. Both countries are located in a biogeographic region of deciduous forests and evergreen sclerophyllous scrub within the Mediterranean bioclimatic zone. The maritime area of the biosphere reserve is dominated by the Strait of Gibraltar, which links the two peninsulas. The reserve also encompasses natural and human communication routes between Africa and Europe.
An aquatic sill is a sea floor barrier of relatively shallow depth that restricts water movement between benthic zones of an oceanic basin or lake bottom. There are roughly 400 sills in the Earth's oceans, covering 0.01% of the seafloor. A classic example is the Strait of Gibraltar Gateway between the Mediterranean sea and the Atlantic Ocean.
The Zanclean flood or Zanclean deluge is theorized to have refilled the Mediterranean Sea 5.33 million years ago. This flooding ended the Messinian salinity crisis and reconnected the Mediterranean Sea to the Atlantic Ocean, although it is possible that even before the flood there were partial connections to the Atlantic Ocean. The reconnection marks the beginning of the Zanclean age.
The 2016 Alborian Sea earthquake struck offshore, north northeast of Al Hoceïma, Morocco in the Strait of Gibraltar on January 25 at 04:22:02 UTC, or roughly 05:22:02 West Africa Time. At its strongest in the Alboran Sea, the earthquake measured 6.3–6.4 on the moment magnitude scale (Mw ) at a shallow hypocenter depth of 12 km (7.5 mi). Assigned a maximum Modified Mercalli scale intensity of VI (Strong), the earthquake caused one fatality, injuries to at least 30 persons, and moderate damage in Morocco and Spain.
The topographical relief of Spain is characterized by being quite high, with an average altitude of 660 meters above sea level, quite mountainous compared to other European countries and only surpassed by Switzerland, Austria, Greece and the microstates of Andorra and Liechtenstein. In peninsular Spain, the terrain is articulated around a large Meseta Central that occupies most of the center of the Iberian Peninsula. Outside the plateau, there is the depression of the Guadalquivir river, located in the southwest of the peninsula, and the Ebro river depression, located in the northeast.
