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At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources
USGS1984

The Crati Submarine Fan, Ionian Sea

The Crati Fan is located in the tectonically active submerged extension of the Apennines chain and foretrough. The small fan system is growing in a relatively shallow (200 to 450 m), elongate nearshore basin receiving abundant input from the Crati River. The fan is characterized by a short, steep, channelized section (inner or upper fan) and a smooth, slightly bulging distal section (outer or lower fan). The numerous subparallel channels head in the shelf or littoral zone and do not form branching distributary patterns. Sand and mud depositional lobes of the outer fan stretch over more than 60% of fan length. ?? 1984 Springer-Verlag New York Inc.

Geo-Marine Letters↗
USGS1984

Delgada Fan: Preliminary interpretation of channel development

The Delgada Fan, an irregularly shaped turbidite deposit extending more than 350 km offshore from northern California, consists of two large leveed-valley units each fed by a separate complex of coalescing submarine canyons and slope gullies. Although the leveed-valley units head within 25 km of each other, both appear to have developed independently during fan growth. The larger southern leveed-valley system has not developed middle-fan distributary channels and appears to illustrate a period of progressive valley abandonment. Although the lower-fan area is underlain by sandy sediments, little sand has been recovered in piston cores from the leveed-valley unit. ?? 1984 Springer-Verlag New York Inc.

Geo-Marine Letters↗
USGS1984

Monterey Fan: Growth pattern control by basin morphology and changing sea levels

Monterey Fan is the largest modern fan off the California shore. Two main submarine canyon systems feed it via a complex pattern of fan valleys and channels. The northern Ascension Canyon system is relatively inactive during high sea-level periods. In contrast, Monterey Canyon and its tributaries to the south cut across the shelf and remain active during high sea level. Deposition on the upper fan is controlled primarily by the relative activity within these two canyon systems. Deposition over the rest of the fan is controlled by the oceanic crust topography, resulting in an irregular fan shape and periodic major shifts in the locus of deposition. ?? 1984 Springer-Verlag New York Inc.

Geo-Marine Letters↗
USGS1984

Navy Fan, California Borderland: Growth pattern and depositional processes

Navy Fan is a Late Pleistocene sand-rich fan prograding into an irregularly shaped basin in the southern California Borderland. The middle fan, characterized by one active and two abandoned 'distributary' channels and associated lobe deposits, at present onlaps part of the basin slope directly opposite from the upper-fan valley, thus dividing the lower-fan/basin-plain regions into two separate parts of different depths. Fine-scale mesotopographic relief on the fan surface and correlation of individual turbidite beds through nearly 40 cores on the middle and lower fan provide data for evaluating the Late Pleistocene and Holocene depositional processes. ?? 1984 Springer-Verlag New York Inc.

Geo-Marine Letters↗
USGS1984

The Ebro Deep-Sea Fan system

The Ebro Fan System consists of en echelon channel-levee complexes, 50??20 km in area and 200-m thick. A few strong reflectors in a generally transparent seismic facies identify the sand-rich channel floors and levee crests. Numerous continuous acoustic reflectors characterize overbank turbidites and hemipelagites that blanket abandoned channel-levee complexes. The interlobe areas between channel complexes fill with homogeneous mud and sand from mass flow and overbank deposition; these exhibit a transparent seismic character. The steep continental rise and sediment 'drainage' of Valencia Trough at the end of the channel-levee complexes prevent the development of distributary channels and midfan lobe deposits. ?? 1984 Springer-Verlag New York Inc.

Geo-Marine Letters↗
USGS1984

The Laurentian Fan: Sohm Abyssal Plain

The 0.5- to 2-km thick Quaternary Laurentian Fan is built over Tertiary and Mesozoic sediments that rest on oceanic crust. Two 400-km long fan valleys, with asymmetric levees up to 700-m high, lead to an equally long, sandy, lobate basin plain (northern Sohm Abyssal Plain). The muddy distal Sohm Abyssal Plain is a further 400-km long. The sediment supplied to the fan is glacial in origin, and in part results from seismically triggered slumping on the upper continental slope. Sandy turbidity currents, such as the 1929 Grand Banks earthquake event, probably erode the fan-valley floors; but thick muddy turbidity currents build up the high levees. ?? 1984 Springer-Verlag New York Inc.

Geo-Marine Letters↗
USGS1984

Miocene Blanca Fan, Northern Channel Islands, California: Small fans reflecting tectonism and volcanism

Blanca fan is a submarine fan composed of Miocene volcaniclastic strata. Parts of the fan system are exposed on Santa Cruz and Santa Rosa Islands, and possibly correlative strata crop out on San Miguel and Santa Catalina Islands. The Blanca fan and underlying breccia reflect regional transcurrent faulting in the California Continental Borderland and development of a system of rapidly subsiding basins and uplifted linear ridges during early and middle Miocene time. Erosion of uplifted crystalline basement rocks followed by the onset of silicic volcanism created linear sediment sources for the alluvial and submarine fans, respectively. ?? 1984 Springer-Verlag New York Inc.

Geo-Marine Letters↗
USGS1984

Submarine-fan facies associations of the Eocene Butano Sandstone, Santa Cruz mountains, California

The Eocene Butano Sandstone was deposited as a submarine fan in a relatively small, partly restricted basin in a borderland setting. It is possibly as thick as 3000 m and was derived from erosion of nearly Mesozoic granitic and older metamorphic rocks located to the south. Deposition was at lower bathyal to abyssal water depths. The original fan may have been 120-to 160-km long and 80-km wide. Outcrops of submarine-canyon, innerfan, middle-fan, and outer-fan facies associations indicate that the depositional model of Mutti and Ricci Lucchi can be used to describe the Butano Sandstone. ?? 1984 Springer-Verlag New York Inc.

Geo-Marine Letters↗
USGS1984

Trench-fill submarine-fan facies associations of the Upper Cretaceous Chugach terrane, southern Alaska

Turbidites of the Upper Cretaceous Chugach terrane of southern Alaska were deposited in a trench during northward-directed subduction. The fault-bounded outcrop belt of the Chugach terrane is about 2000-km long and 100-km wide and was accreted to Alaska during the Cenozoic. Turbidites are at least 5000 m thick, are extensively deformed, have been regionally metamorphosed, and have been intruded by anatectic granites. Facies associations indicate an east-to-west progression from inner-fan to middle-fan, outer-fan, fan-fringe, and basin-plain deposits. To the north is a marginal trench-slope facies association and a basin. ?? 1984 Springer-Verlag New York Inc.

Geo-Marine Letters↗
USGS1984

Ferrelo fan, California: Depositional system influenced by Eustatic sea level changes

Remnants of an Eocene fan system are preserved onshore at San Diego and in the central part of the southern California borderland. Even though faults and erosion have truncated its margins, geophysical data and exploratory wells indicate that remaining parts of the fan extend beneath an offshore area nearly 400-km long and 40- to 100-km wide. Environments representing fluvial, fan-delta, shelf-channel, overlapping inner- to outer-fan, and basin-plain facies are recognized or inferred. Three progradational cycles onshore and two distinct pulses of sand accumulation offshore are attributable to eustatic low sea-level stands rather than to tectonic uplift or shifts in depositional patterns. ?? 1984 Springer-Verlag New York Inc.

Geo-Marine Letters↗
USGS1984

Submarine-fan facies associations of the Upper Cretaceous and Paleocene Gottero Sandstone, Ligurian Apennines, Italy

The Upper Cretaceous and Paleocene Gottero Sandstone was deposited as a small deep-sea fan on ophiolitic crust in a trench-slope basin. It was thrust northeastward as an allochthonous sheet in Early and Middle Cenozoic time. The Gottero, as thick as 1500 m, was probably derived from erosion of Hercynian granites and associated metamorphic rocks in northern Corsica. Outcrops of inner-fan channel, middle-fan channel and interchannel, outer-fan lobe, fan-fringe, and basin-plain facies associations indicate that the depositional model of Mutti and Ricci Lucchi for mixed-sediment deep-sea fans can be used. The original fan had a radius of 30 to 50 km. ?? 1984 Springer-Verlag New York Inc.

Geo-Marine Letters↗
USGS1984

Turbidite facies in an ancient subduction complex: Torlesse terrane, New Zealand

The Torlesse terrane of New Zealand is an ancient subduction complex consisting of deformed turbidite-facies rocks. These are mainly thick-bedded sandstone (facies B and C) with subordinate mudstone (facies D and E), comparable to inner- and middle-fan deposits of a submarine fan. Strata were deposited in trench-floor and trench-slope settings that received sandy sediment from slope-cutting submarine canyons. The dominance of sandstone suggests that some mudstone may have been selectively subducted. Construction of a detailed sediment dispersal model is not possible because tectonic deformation has largely destroyed original facies relationships and paleocurrent patterns. ?? 1984 Springer-Verlag New York Inc.

Geo-Marine Letters↗
USGS1984

Aftermath of comfan-Comments, not solutions

Comparison of descriptions of fans in this volume demonstrates the major problems in developing general models that incorporate modern fans and ancient turbidite sequences. Attempts to develop a unifying fan model are presently premature. The most pressing need is refined definition of the primary common characteristics of submarine turbidite systems such as fans. ?? 1984 Springer-Verlag New York Inc.

Geo-Marine Letters↗
USGS1982

Puzzling mass movement features in the Navarinsky Canyon head, Bering Sea

Two types of morphologic features in the head of Navarinsky Canyon are attributed to mass movement of near-surface sediment. A series of pull-aparts is located downslope of large sand waves. These pull-aparts, possibly induced by liquefaction, affect the upper 5 to 10 m of sandy sediment (water depths 350 to 600 m) on a 1o slope. A hummocky elongate mound of muddy sand (water depths 550 to 800 m) contains chaotic internal reflectors to a subbottom depth of 30 to 40 m and possibly is the product of a shallow slide. We speculate that Holocene seismicity is the likely triggering mechanism. ?? 1982 A. M. Dowden, Inc.

Geo-Marine Letters↗
USGS1982

Sonographs of submarine sediment failure caused by the 1980 earthquake off northern California

In 1980, a large earthquake caused extensive sediment failure on the shallow continental shelf off the Klamath River in northern California. Side-scan sonography was used to complement detailed geophysical profiling in identifying specific features and resolving modes of failure. The features include a nearly flat failure terrace mantled with sand boils, collapse craters and sediment flows, and bounded on the seaward side by a meandering continuous toe ridge. Seaward of the terrace lies a compression zone delineated by small pressure ridges. Our findings indicate a temporal progression of failure from lique-faction of shallow subsurface sand to lateral spread of intact blocks to sediment collapse and flow. ?? 1982 A. M. Dowden, Inc.

Geo-Marine Letters↗
USGS1982

Large sand waves in Navarinsky Canyon head, Bering Sea

Sand waves are present in the heads of large submarine canyons in the northwestern Bering Sea. They vary in height between 2 to 15 m and have wavelengths of 600 m. They are not only expressed on the seafloor, but are also well defined in the subsurface and resemble enormous climbing bed forms. We conjecture that the sand waves originated during lower stands of sea level in the Pleistocene. Although we cannot explain the mechanics of formation of the sand waves, internal-wave generated currents are among four types of current that could account for these large structures. ?? 1982 A. M. Dowden, Inc.

Geo-Marine Letters↗
USGS1982

Geological interpretation of cone penetrometer tests in Norton Sound, Alaska

In situ cone-penetrometer tests at 11 stations in Norton Sound, Alaska, complement previous studies of geologic processes and provide geotechnical data for an analysis of sediment response to loading. Assessment of the penetrometer records shows that various geologic factors influence penetration resistance. On the Yukon prodelta, penetration resistance increases with the level of storm wave or ice loading. In central and eastern Norton Sound, thermogenic and biogenic gas, as well as variations in sediment texture and composition, effect a wide range of resistance to penetration. ?? 1982 A. M. Dowden, Inc.

Geo-Marine Letters↗
USGS1982

Channel systems and lobe construction in the Mississippi Fan

Morphological features on the Mississippi Fan in the eastern Gulf of Mexico were mapped using GLORIA II, a long-range side-scan sonar system. Prominent is a sinuous channel flanked by well-developed levees and occasional crevasse splays. The channel follows the axis and thickest part of the youngest fan lobe; seismic-reflection profiles offer evidence that its course has remained essentially constant throughout lobe development. Local modification and possible erosion of levees by currents indicates a present state of inactivity. Superficial sliding has affected part of the fan lobe, but does not appear to have been a factor in lobe construction. ?? 1982 A. M. Dowden, Inc.

Geo-Marine Letters↗