Peter J. Talling
Key future directions for research on turbidity currents and their deposits
Talling, Peter J.; Allin, Joshua; Armitage, Dominic A.; Arnott, Robert W.C.; Cartigny, Matthieu J.B.; Clare, Michael A.; Felletti, Fabrizio; Covault, Jacob A.; Girardclos, Stephanie; Hansen, Ernst; Hill, Philip R.; Hiscott, Richard N.; Hogg, Andrew J.; Clarke, John Hughes; Jobe, Zane R.; Malgesini, Giuseppe; Mozzato, Alessandro; Naruse, Hajime; Parkinson, Sam; Peel, Frank J.; Piper, David J.W.; Pope, E. D.; Postma, George; Rowley, P.; Sguazzini, Andrea; Stevenson, Christopher J.; Sumner, Esther J.; Sylvester, Zoltan; Watts, Camilla; Xu, Jingping
Authors
Joshua Allin
Dominic A. Armitage
Robert W.C. Arnott
Matthieu J.B. Cartigny
Michael A. Clare
Fabrizio Felletti
Jacob A. Covault
Stephanie Girardclos
Ernst Hansen
Philip R. Hill
Richard N. Hiscott
Andrew J. Hogg
John Hughes Clarke
Zane R. Jobe
Giuseppe Malgesini
Alessandro Mozzato
Hajime Naruse
Sam Parkinson
Frank J. Peel
David J.W. Piper
E. D. Pope
George Postma
P. Rowley
Andrea Sguazzini
Christopher J. Stevenson
Esther J. Sumner
Zoltan Sylvester
Camilla Watts
Jingping Xu
Abstract
Turbidity currents, and other types of submarine sediment density flow, redistribute more sediment across the surface of the Earth than any other sediment flow process, yet their sediment concentration has never been measured directly in the deep ocean. The deposits of these flows are of societal importance as imperfect records of past earthquakes and tsunamogenic landslides and as the reservoir rocks for many deep-water petroleum accumulations. Key future research directions on these flows and their deposits were identified at an informal workshop in September 2013. This contribution summarizes conclusions from that workshop, and engages the wider community in this debate. International efforts are needed for an initiative to monitor and understand a series of test sites where flows occur frequently, which needs coordination to optimize sharing of equipment and interpretation of data. Direct monitoring observations should be combined with cores and seismic data to link flow and deposit character, whilst experimental and numerical models play a key role in understanding field observations. Such an initiative may be timely and feasible, due to recent technological advances in monitoring sensors, moorings, and autonomous data recovery. This is illustrated here by recently collected data from the Squamish River delta, Monterey Canyon, Congo Canyon, and offshore SE Taiwan. A series of other key topics are then highlighted. Theoretical considerations suggest that supercritical flows may often occur on gradients of greater than ∼ 0.6°. Trains of up-slope-migrating bedforms have recently been mapped in a wide range of marine and freshwater settings. They may result from repeated hydraulic jumps in supercritical flows, and dense (greater than approximately 10% volume) near-bed layers may need to be invoked to explain transport of heavy (25 to 1,000 kg) blocks. Future work needs to understand how sediment is transported in these bedforms, the internal structure and preservation potential of their deposits, and their use in facies prediction. Turbulence damping may be widespread and commonplace in submarine sediment density flows, particularly as flows decelerate, because it can occur at low ( < 0.1%) volume concentrations. This could have important implications for flow evolution and deposit geometries. Better quantitative constraints are needed on what controls flow capacity and competence, together with improved constraints on bed erosion and sediment resuspension. Recent advances in understanding dilute or mainly saline flows in submarine channels should be extended to explore how flow behavior changes as sediment concentrations increase. The petroleum industry requires predictive models of longer-term channel system behavior and resulting deposit architecture, and for these purposes it is important to distinguish between geomorphic and stratigraphic surfaces in seismic datasets. Validation of models, including against full-scale field data, requires clever experimental design of physical models and targeted field programs.
Citation
Talling, P. J., Allin, J., Armitage, D. A., Arnott, R. W., Cartigny, M. J., Clare, M. A., Felletti, F., Covault, J. A., Girardclos, S., Hansen, E., Hill, P. R., Hiscott, R. N., Hogg, A. J., Clarke, J. H., Jobe, Z. R., Malgesini, G., Mozzato, A., Naruse, H., Parkinson, S., Peel, F. J., …Xu, J. (2015). Key future directions for research on turbidity currents and their deposits. Journal of Sedimentary Research, 85(2), 153-169. https://doi.org/10.2110/jsr.2015.03
Journal Article Type | Article |
---|---|
Acceptance Date | Oct 24, 2014 |
Online Publication Date | Feb 16, 2015 |
Publication Date | Feb 16, 2015 |
Deposit Date | Jan 25, 2018 |
Publicly Available Date | Oct 27, 2022 |
Journal | Journal of Sedimentary Research |
Print ISSN | 1527-1404 |
Publisher | Society for Sedimentary Geology (SEPM) |
Peer Reviewed | Peer Reviewed |
Volume | 85 |
Issue | 2 |
Pages | 153-169 |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.2110/jsr.2015.03 |
Keywords | Geology |
Public URL | https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/557395 |
You might also like
Anatomy of a volcanic eruption undersea
(2023)
Journal Article
A bedform phase diagram for dense granular currents
(2020)
Journal Article
Downloadable Citations
About Repository@Hull
Administrator e-mail: repository@hull.ac.uk
This application uses the following open-source libraries:
SheetJS Community Edition
Apache License Version 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/)
PDF.js
Apache License Version 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/)
Font Awesome
SIL OFL 1.1 (http://scripts.sil.org/OFL)
MIT License (http://opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.html)
CC BY 3.0 ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)
Powered by Worktribe © 2025
Advanced Search