Three case studies are used to exemplify the wide variety of controlling factors that combine to influence the development of modern turbidite systems, and how these vary with location and time. For example, Cascadia Basin in the Pacific Ocean off western North America, which is underlain by the Cascadia Subduction Zone, exhibits the dominant tectonic control of earthquake triggering for turbid...

During the past 50 years, the turbidite paradigm has promoted many myths related to deep-water turbidite deposition. John E. Sanders (1926–1999), a pioneering process sedimentologist, first uncovered many of these turbidite myths. This paper provides a reality check by undoing 10 of these turbidite myths. Myth No. 1: turbidity currents are non-turbulent flows with multiple sediment-support mech...

The volume and interplay of mass-transport (MTD) and turbidite-system deposits varies on different continental margins depending on local and external controls such as active-margin or passive-margin tectonic setting and climatic and/or sea-level change. Erosion and breaching of local grabens at the shelf edge of the southern Bering Sea produce giant, gullied canyons and MTD sheets that dominat...

GLORIA sidescan imagery, multibeam bathymetry, seismic profiles, and piston cores (3-5 m penetration) reveal the near-surface geology of the Bryant Canyon turbidite pathway on the continental margin of Louisiana. This pathway extends from the continental shelf edge, across the continental slope, to a deep-sea fan on the continental rise. The pathway is narrow (<2 km) where it crosses shallow sa...

A new approach is introduced for turbidite modeling, leveraging the potential of computational fluid dynamics methods to simulate the flow processes that led to turbidite formation. The practical use of numerical flow simulation for the purpose of turbidite modeling so far is hindered by the need to specify parameters and initial flow conditions that are a priori unknown. The present study prop...

High-resolution sedimentological and micropaleontological studies of several deep-sea cores retrieved from the levees of the Celtic and Armorican turbidite systems (Bay of Biscay — North Atlantic Ocean) allow the detection of the major oscillations of the British–Irish Ice Sheet (BIIS) and ‘Fleuve Manche’ palaeoriver discharges over the last 30,000 years, which were mainly triggered by climate ...

Goldfinger et al. (2012) interpreted a 10,000 year old sequence of deep sea turbidites at the Cascadia subduction zone (CSZ) as a record of clusters of plate-boundary great earthquakes separated by gaps of many hundreds of years. We performed statistical analyses on this inferred earthquake record to test the temporal clustering model and to calculate time-dependent recurrence intervals and pro...

Identification of similar Turbidite features on well log and Seismic There have been many studies of how Direct Hydrocarbon Indicators (DHIs) can help or hurt us when trying to distinguish fluid and lithology effects on seismic amplitudes. The integration of outcrop studies can enhance the interpretation of complex reservoirs in deep-water depositional settings. In this paper we present observa...

The incipient island-arc system of southern Central America (Cretaceous early Oligoccne) is characterized by thick turbidite systems. which mainly filled inner fore-arc troughs. Outcrop data show four. second-order depositional sequences in the deep-water sedlments. The formation of these depositional sequences is strongly related to the morphotectonic evolution of the island-arc system. Each d...

10 Recent sedimentation along the Hikurangi subduction margin off northeastern New Zealand is 11 investigated using a series of piston cores collected between 2003 and 2008. The active Hikurangi 12 Margin lies along the Pacific-Australia subduction plate boundary and contains a diverse range of 13 geomorphologic settings. Slope basin stratigraphy is thick and complex, resulting from sustained h...