Intra-clinothem variability in sedimentary texture and process regime recorded down slope profiles     

Grace I. E. Cosgrove  Miquel Poyatos-Moré  David R. Lee  David M. Hodgson  William D. McCaffrey  Nigel P. Mountney 《Sedimentology》2020,67(1):431-456

Shelf-margin clinothem successions can archive process interactions at the shelf to slope transition, and their architecture provides constraints on the interplay of factors that control basin-margin evolution. However, detailed textural analysis and facies distributions from shelf to slope transitions remain poorly documented. This study uses quantitative grain-size and sorting data from coeval shelf and slope deposits of a single clinothem that crops out along a 5 km long, dip-parallel transect of the Eocene Sobrarbe Deltaic Complex (Ainsa Basin, south-central Pyrenees, Spain). Systematic sampling of sandstone beds tied to measured sections has captured vertical and basinward changes in sedimentary texture and facies distributions at an intra-clinothem scale. Two types of hyperpycnal flow-related slope deposits, both rich in mica and terrestrial organic matter, are differentiated according to grain size, sorting and bed geometry: (i) sustained hyperpycnal flow deposits, which are physically linked to coarse channelized sediments in the shelf setting and which deposit sand down the complete slope profile; (ii) episodic hyperpycnal flow deposits, which are disconnected from, and incise into, shelf sands and which are associated with sediment bypass of the proximal slope and coarse-grained sand deposition on the medial and distal slope. Both types of hyperpycnites are interbedded with relatively homogenous, organic-free and mica-free, well-sorted, very fine-grained sandstones, which are interpreted to be remobilized from wave-dominated shelf environments; these wave-dominated deposits are found only on the proximal and medial slope. Coarse-grained sediment bypass into the deeper-water slope settings is therefore dominated by episodic hyperpycnal flows, whilst sustained hyperpycnal flows and turbidity currents remobilizing wave-dominated shelf deposits are responsible for the full range of grain sizes in the proximal and medial slope, thus facilitating clinoform progradation. This novel dataset highlights previously undocumented intra-clinothem variability related to updip changes in the shelf process-regime, which is therefore a key factor controlling downdip architecture and resulting sedimentary texture.  相似文献   

Effects of sea states on seafloor compliance studies     

Jui-Hsien Wang  Wu-Cheng Chi  R. Nigel Edwards  Eleanor C. Willoughby 《Marine Geophysical Researches》2010,31(1-2):99-107

Gas hydrates affect the bulk physical properties of marine sediments, in particular, elastic parameters. Shear modulus is an important parameter for estimating the distribution of hydrates in the marine sediments. However, S-wave information is difficult to recover without proper datasets. Seafloor compliance, the transfer function between pressure induced by surface gravity waves and the associated seafloor deformation, is one of few techniques to study shear modulus in the marine sediments. The coherence between recorded time series of displacement and pressure provides a measure of the quality of the calculated transfer function, the seafloor compliance. Thus, it is important to understand how to collect high coherence datasets. Here we conducted a 10-month pilot experiment using broadband seismic sensors and differential pressure gauges. We found that data collected in shallow water depth and during rough seas gave high coherence. This study is the first time long-term data sets have been employed to investigate seafloor compliance data quality and its dependence on sea state. These results will help designing future large-scale compliance experiments to study anomalously high shear moduli associated with the presence of gas hydrate or cold vents, or alternatively anomalously low shear moduli, associated with partial melt and magma chamber.  相似文献