HR: 0803h
AN: NS11D-0801    [Abstracts]
TI: Evidence of Recent Slope Failures on the Scotian Slope
AU: * Henderson, J F
EM: jennifer_henderson@aoageophysics.com
AF: AOA Geophysics Inc., 7532 Sandholdt Road Suite 6, Moss Landing, CA 95039, United States
AU: Moran, K
EM: kate.moran@gso.uri.edu
AF: Dept of Ocean Engineering & Graduate School of Oceanography, University of Rhode Island, Narragansett, RI 02882, United States
AB: The Logan Canyon debris-flow corridor, a 5-20 km wide region of the Scotian Slope, offshore southeastern Canada, consisting of numerous mass-wasting deposits, was analyzed for slope stability. This area is representative of the class of seafloor that lies in the northeastern half of the Scotian Slope where canyons heavily dissect the seafloor. Slope failure features are ubiquitous on this margin and include slumps, slides, debris flows and turbidity currents. In the Logan Canyon area, a corridor dominated by debris flow deposits is observed from multibeam seafloor imagery. Earlier studies suggest that most of the mass wasting features on the Scotian Slope occurred in the early Holocene or earlier. In this study, multibeam, high resolution seismic reflection, and piston core data are used to identify and analyze large- and small- scale failures and to reconstruct the series of mass wasting events in the debris flow corridor. Slope stability analyses combined with seismostratigraphy and multibeam imagery were used to interpret the sequential events of Quaternary continental slope mass wasting processes and to determine the most likely triggering mechanism(s). This reconstruction reveals a recent mass-wasting event, suggesting active mass wasting on the Scotian margin.
DE: 3002 Continental shelf and slope processes (4219)
DE: 3022 Marine sediments: processes and transport
DE: 3025 Marine seismics (0935, 7294)
DE: 3045 Seafloor morphology, geology, and geophysics
DE: 3070 Submarine landslides
SC: Near-Surface Geophysics [NS]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting