Geology topics
P.R. Carlson
Publications and source records attributed to P.R. Carlson.
Mass sediment failure and transport features revealed by acoustic techniques, Beringian Margin, Bering Sea, Alaska
Some of the largest single slide masses, including huge blocks tens of kilometers wide, occur on the rise of the central margin. Sliding of these blocks may have initiated the incision of some of the world's largest submarine canyons. One mass failure, particularly well defined by GLORIA, is 55 km long. This slide and others along the plateau are associated with diapiric-like structures indicative of relatively recent tectonism. -from Authors
Bowers Swell: Evidence for a zone of compressive deformation concentric with Bowers Ridge, Bering Sea
Bowers Swell is a newly discovered bathymetric feature which is up to 90 m high, between 12 and 20 km wide, and which extends arcuately about 400 km along the northern and eastern sides of Bowers Ridge. The swell was first revealed on GLORIA sonographs and subsequently mapped on seismic reflection and 3.5 kHz bathymetric profiles. These geophysical data show that the swell caps an arcuate anticlinal ridge, which is composed of deformed strata in an ancient trench on the northern and eastern sides of Bowers Ridge. The trench fill beneath the swell is actively deforming, as shown by faulting of the sea floor and by thinning of the strata across the crest of the swell. Thinning and faulting of the trench strata preclude an origin for the swell by simple sediment draping over an older basement high. We considered several models for the origin of Bowers Swell, including folding and uplift of the underlying trench sediment during the interaction between the Pacific plate beneath the Aleutian Ridge and a remnant oceanic slab beneath Bowers Ridge. However, such plate motions should generate extensive seismicity beneath Bowers Ridge, which is aseismic, and refraction data do not show any remnant slab beneath Bowers Ridge. Another origin considered for Bowers Swell invokes sediment deformation resulting from differential loading and diapirism in the trench fill. However, diapirism is not evident on seismic reflection profiles across the swell. We favour a model in which sediment deformation and swell formation resulted from a few tens of kilometers of low seismicity motion by intraplate crustal blocks beneath the Aleutian Basin. This motion may result from the translation of blocks in western Alaska to the south-west, forcing the movement of the Bering Sea margin west of Alaska into the abyssal Aleutian Basin. ?? 1990.
GLORIA investigation of the exclusive economic zone in the Gulf of Alaska; MV Farnella Cruise F6-89-GA, May 16 to June 11, 1989
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Seismic reflection characteristics of glacial and glacimarine sediment in the Gulf of Alaska and adjacent fjords
Glaciation together with tectonism have been dominant factors affecting sedimentation in the Gulf of Alaska area from at least the late Miocene throughout the Quaternary. The effects of tectonism are apparent in high mountains that border the gulf, raised terraces of Middleton Island and the eastern gulf coastal zone, and numerous active faults and related earthquakes. Glacial evidence includes magnificent glaciers and their onshore deposits, spectacular fjords, large sea valleys incised in the continental shelf, submarine morainal ridges at mouths of bays and sea valleys, and thick glacimarine sedimentary sequences (diamicts) that are exposed onshore and at the sea floor along the outer shelf. Seismic-reflection profiling and sampling of the uppermost marine sedimentary sequences in the Gulf of Alaska and adjacent fjords and bays have allowed identification of three discrete glacially related stratigraphic units. These units were delineated on the basis of seismic signature, geometry, physiographic location, stratigraphic position, and sedimentologic characteristics. The oldest unit, a Quaternary diamict, is portrayed on seismic profiles by irregular, discontinuous reflections. This unit probably includes till, outwash and glacimarine sediment. A geographically restricted unit, one incorporating Holocene end moraines at bay mouths and associated with some sea valleys, consists of jumbled masses of discontinuous reflections and very irregular surface morphology. The youngest unit, a blanket of Holocene sand to clayey silt prograding as a sediment wedge across the shelf, contains nearly horizontal, parallel reflections except where disrupted by mass movement. Although seismic-reflection data alone cannot provide definitive proof of the presence of glacial sediment, when combined with sea-floor sampling, seismic profiling is a powerful tool for determining the continuity of marine sedimentary units and relationships to past and modern glaciers.
Turbidity-current channels in Queen Inlet, Glacier Bay, Alaska
Queen Inlet is unique among Glacier Bay fjords because it alone has a branching channel system incised in the Holocene sediment fill of the fjord floor. Bathymetry and seismic-reflection profiles show that four channels begin on, or at the base of, the delta front of this marine-outwash fjord. By midpoint of the fjord, these channels have merged into one main channel that extends the length of the fjord. The main channel cuts deeply into the scarp that separates this hanging tributary from the West Arm of Glacier Bay. The Queen Inlet channel ends on the main fjord floor as several small distributaries that form part of a lobate-fan deposit. Sand from the channel and lobate fan, in contrast to fjord-floor mud, plus steep truncated channel walls indicate that turbidity currents created this apparently active channel system. Queen Inlet and other known channel-containing fjords are marine-outwash fjords; the tidewater glacial fjords do not have steep delta fronts on which slides are generated and may not have a sufficient reservoir of potentially unstable coarse sediment to generate channel-cutting turbidity currents. Presence or absence of channels, as revealed in the ancient rock record, may be one criterion for interpreting types of fjords.
Late Cenozoic offsets on the offshore connection between the Fairweather and Queen Charlotte faults off southeast Alaska
Closely spaced seismic reflection profiles permit us to extend the onshore Fairweather fault across the continental margin off southeast Alaska to the Queen Charlotte fault. Evidence for Quaternary movement along this major plate boundary includes 20–40-m high sea-floor scarps, offset subsurface seismic reflectors, sea-floor bathymetry that indicates as much as 70 km of right-lateral offset in the last 1 m.y., 5–6 cm/yr of movement on the onshore Fairweather fault, and recorded seismicity along the fault. The Fairweather-Queen Charlotte fault system, similar in dimension to the San Andreas fault system, is a dextral transform fault that truncates the continental margin of North America. Much of the late Cenozoic motion between the Pacific and North American plates has been taken up along the fault system. The Fairweather-Queen Charlotte fault evolved to its present form after passage of the Yakutat block, the youngest of the allochthonous terranes that form southern Alaska.
Acoustic evidence for gas-charged sediment in the abyssal Aleutian Basin, Bering Sea, Alaska
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Surface current patterns suggested by suspended sediment distribution over the outer continental margin, Bering Sea
Samples of total suspended matter (TSM) were collected at the surface over the northern outer continental margin of the Bering Sea during the summers of 1980 and 1981. Volume concentrations of surface TSM averaged 0.6 and 1.1 mg l −1 for 1980 and 1981, respectively. Organic matter, largely plankton, made up about 65% of the near-surface TSM for both years. Distributions of TSM suggested that shelf circulation patterns were characterized either by meso- and large- scale eddies or by cross-shelf components of flow superimposed on a general northwesterly net drift. These patterns may be caused by large submarine canyons which dominate the physiography of this part of the Bering Sea continental margin.
Grain-size parameters and constituent grain composition of surface sediment in Navarin Basin Province, Bering Sea
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GLORIA investigation of the exclusive economic zone in the deep Bering Sea; MV Farnella cruise F2-86-BS, 5 July to 4 August 1986
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Internal-wave currents as a mechanism to account for large sand waves in Navarinsky Canyon head, Bering Sea
Sand waves are found in the heads of four of five large submarine canyons that incise the northern continental margin of the Bering Sea. The sand waves occur in a restricted depth zone of about 175-490 m. Those in Navarinsky Canyon, the area surveyed in most detail, are best developed in water depths of 300-375 m; they average 5 m in height and about 650 m in wavelength, with crests oriented subparallel to isobaths and almost perpendicular to the axes of the two main branches of the canyon. We speculate that internal-wave currents are responsible for the sand waves. Currents generated by internal waves are a particularly attractive mechanism for at least three reasons: 1) the energy of the internal waves could be amplified in the head of Navarinsky Canyon, especially in the area of the sand wave field; 2) upslope boundary-layer intensification of internal-wave currents might be sufficient to move the sediment composing the sand waves; and 3) the wavelengths of higher-frequency internal waves closely match the spacing of the sand waves. Although we based our assumptions on present-day conditions, we do not know if the sand waves are active. Consequently, we do not discount the possibility that the sand waves could have originated in the Pleistocene when Navarinsky Canyon headed in a shallow embayment that was receiving large quantities of sediment discharged by glacial meltwater streams. These conditions probably caused strong vertical density gradients in the coastal waters, which would have been more favorable than those today for the propagation of high-frequency internal waves.
Map and selected seismic profiles of the seaward extension of the Fairweather Fault, eastern Gulf of Alaska
No abstract available.
Mass movement of fine-grained sediment to the basin floor, bering sea, Alaska
Large volumes of fine-grained sediment have been transported to the deepbasin floor in the Bering Sea, especially during glacial low stands of sea level. Turbidity currents and several types of mass movement have been the chief transporting agents. ?? 1985 Springer-Verlag New York Inc.
Interlaminated ice-proximal glacimarine sediments in Muir Inlet, Alaska
Muir Inlet in Glacier Bay, Alaska, is a glacial fjord receiving a tremendous volume of sediment annually. The rate of sediment accumulation is greatest proximal to Muir Glacier (about 9 m yr −1 ) and decreases away from the glacier. The primary sediment sources are meltwater streams discharging at subglacial and ice-marginal positions to form overflows, interflows, and underflows (continuous turbidity currents). Overflows and interflows interact with diurnal tidal currents and their volume and sediment concentration varies diurnally and annually with meltwater discharge. These effects produce cyclic deposits of a thin fine-grained sand or silt lamina that grades normally to a thicker poorly to very poorly sorted mud lamina. This lamina couplet is termed a cyclopel . Underflows are suggested to occur in this glacimarine environment because of conditions unique to subglacial fluvial systems. Underflow deposits occur only in proximal positions (<0.5 km from glacier face), and are coarse-grained, reverse to normal graded, and exhibit an increase in sorting and sand content up-layer. Ice-rafted debris (identified as particles >177 μ m) is ubiquitous, though low (<5% by weight), and occurs as isolated particles, frozen pellets, or as lenses that in cores may have a lamina appearance. Proximally, ice-rafted debris is difficult to identify because proximal sediment is often as coarse-grained. Deposited sediment may be reworked by tidal currents, and sediment gravity flows. Depositional processes operating in Muir Inlet produce interlaminated sand/silt/clay that characterizes sediment proximal to a glacier and fines seaward to mud. Sediment is classified into one of three sediment types: (1) Type I sediment is very fine grained (mean 8.65--7.17 ~), low in sand (0.1--11.2%), and very poorly to poorly sorted. It is the dominant sediment type in Muir Inlet, and is transported by plumes and deposited by suspension settling. (2) Type II sediment is fine- to coarse-grained (mean 6.70--3.12 ~), low to high in sand (5.1---86.6%), and very poorly to moderately sorted. It represents reworked sediment, proximal plume deposits, or coarse-grained laminae of cyclopels. (3) Type III sediment is coarse-grained (mean 3.89--2.38 ~), high in sand (58.0--100.0%), and poorly to well sorted. It is deposited by sediment gravity flows or underflows.
Surface and near-surface geology, Navarin Basin province: Results of the 1980-81 field seasons
No abstract available.