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Deep-water (below wave base) processes, although generally hidden from view, shape the sedimentary record of more than 65% of the Earth's surface, including large parts of ancient mountain belts. This book aims to inform advanced-level undergraduate and postgraduate students, and professional Earth scientists with interests in physical oceanography and hydrocarbon exploration and production, about many of the important physical aspects of deep-water (mainly deep-marine) systems. The authors consider transport and deposition in the deep sea, trace-fossil assemblages, and facies stacking patterns as an archive of the underlying controls on deposit architecture (e.g., seismicity, climate change, autocyclicity). Topics include modern and ancient deep-water sedimentary environments, tectonic settings, and how basinal and extra-basinal processes generate the typical characteristics of basin slopes, submarine canyons, contourite mounds and drifts, submarine fans, basin floors and abyssal plains.
List of contents
Preface xi
About the companion website xiii
Part 1 Process and product 1
1 Physical and biological processes 3
1.1 Introduction 4
1.2 Shelf-edge processes 5
1.2.1 High-level escape of mud from the shelf 5
1.2.2 Currents in submarine canyons 7
1.2.3 Internal waves 9
1.2.4 Sediment slides and mass transport complexes (MTCs) 10
1.3 Deep, thermohaline, clear-water currents 12
1.4 Density currents and sediment gravity flows 16
1.4.1 Classification 17
1.4.2 Transformations between flow types 21
1.5 Turbidity currents and turbidites 23
1.5.1 Definition and equations of flow 23
1.5.2 Natural variations and triggering processes 27
1.5.3 Supercritical flow of turbidity currents 32
1.5.4 Autosuspension in turbidity currents 33
1.5.5 Effects of obstacles in the flow path 33
1.5.6 Turbidites 34
1.5.7 Cross-stratification in turbidites 36
1.5.8 Antidunes in turbidites 37
1.5.9 Turbidites from low-concentration flows 38
1.5.10 Downcurrent grain size-bed thickness trends in turbidites 40
1.5.11 Time scales for turbidite deposition 40
1.6 Concentrated density flows and their deposits 42
1.6.1 Deposits from concentrated density flows 42
1.6.2 Large mud clasts in concentrated density-flow deposits 44
1.7 Inflated sandflows and their deposits 45
1.7.1 Deposits of inflated sandflows 45
1.8 Cohesive flows and their deposits 46
1.8.1 Definitions and equations of flow 46
1.8.2 Turbulence of cohesive flows 48
1.8.3 Competence of cohesive flows 49
1.8.4 Deposits of cohesive flows, including debrites 49
1.8.5 Submarine versus subaerial cohesive flows 52
1.9 Accumulation of biogenic skeletons and organic matter 52
1.9.1 Environmental information from biogenic skeletons 55
2 Sediments (facies) 59
2.1 Introduction 60
2.2 Facies classifications 60
2.2.1 Seismic facies 62
2.2.2 The Pickering et al. classification scheme 62
2.3 Facies Class A: Gravels, muddy gravels, gravelly muds, pebbly sands, >=5% gravel grade 65
2.3.1 Facies Group A1: Disorganised gravels, muddy gravels, gravelly muds and pebbly sands 66
2.3.2 Facies Group A2: Organised gravels and pebbly sands 69
2.4 Facies Class B: Sands, >80% sand grade,
2.4.1 Facies Group B1: Disorganised sands 76
2.4.2 Facies Group B2: Organised sands 77
2.5 Facies Class C: Sand-mud couplets and muddy sands, 20-80% sand grade,
2.5.1 Facies Group C1: Disorganised muddy sands 79
2.5.2 Facies Group C2: Organised sand-mud couplets 82
2.6 Facies Class D: Silts, silty muds, and silt-mud couplets, >80% mud, >=40% silt, 0-20% sand 85
2.6.1 Facies Group D1: Disorganised silts and silty muds 85
2.6.2 Facies Group D2: Organised silts and muddy silts 87
2.7 Facies Class E: >=95% mud grade,
2.7.1 Facies Group E1: Disorganised muds and clays 90
2.7.2 Facies Group E2: Organised muds 94
2.8 Facies Class F: Chaotic deposits 98
2.8.1 Facies Group F1: Exotic clasts 98
2.8.2 Facies Group F2: Contorted/disturbed strata 99
2.9 Facies Class G: Biogenic oozes (>75% biogenics), muddy oozes (50-75% biogenics), biogenic muds (25-50% biogenics) and chemogenic sediments,
2.9.1 Facies Group G1: Biogenic oozes and muddy oozes 102
2.9.2 Facies Group G2: Biogenic mud 104
2.10 Injectites (clastic dykes and sills) (Figs 2.
About the author
Kevin T. Pickering is Professor of Sedimentology & Stratigraphy in the Department of Earth Sciences at University College London, U.K. He has published ~140 peer-reviewed papers, co-authored 6 books and edited 3 books on aspects of deep-water sediments and global environmental issues. He managed the industry-sponsored Ainsa Project, an integrated outcrop-subsurface drilling project to understand deep-marine channels in the Spanish Pyrenees, and has sailed on four international scientific drilling expeditions (DSDP, ODP, IODP). In 2010, in recognition of his research, Pickering was elected as a Fellow of the Geological Society of America.
Richard N. Hiscott is an Emeritus Professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada. His 40 years of process-oriented research covers ancient deep-sea to alluvial facies of Proterozoic to Cretaceous age, four Ocean Drilling Program campaigns including Amazon submarine fan, Quaternary sedimentology of the Labrador Sea, Santa Monica Basin, and the Black Sea region including dynamics of the saline gravity current that enters the low-salinity Black Sea through the Bosphorus Strait.
