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Keynote Speech - Physical Modelling of Submarine Channel Deposits - Towards First Order Prediction
- Publisher: European Association of Geoscientists & Engineers
- Source: Conference Proceedings, Second Conference on Forward Modelling of Sedimentary Systems, Apr 2016, cp-483-00013
- ISBN: 978-94-6282-189-7
Abstract
Process-product studies have been critical to the development of process sedimentology over the past few decades, with the ability to measure flows, and later examine the resulting deposits, removing much of the ambiguity associated with previous interpretations. However, perhaps uniquely for large geomorphic systems on Earth, there are no field-scale process-product studies of submarine channels. In fact, there are remarkably few direct measurements even of the flow dynamics as a result of the difficulties of measuring these powerful, infrequent, and often inaccessible flows. Over the past decade, physical experimentation has provided the first process-product studies for model submarine channel systems, enabling us to link flow behaviour and sedimentation patterns. This has been supplemented by numerical simulations. Synthesise of these observations, in the context of our direct knowledge of submarine channels, enables an overview of submarine channel flow dynamics to be derived, along with process-orientated intra-channel architecture models for low and high latitude systems. These studies reveal that submarine channel processes and deposits change globally (latitudinally), and as a function of geological time, moving us towards a first order prediction of submarine channel deposits based on palaeolatitude and age.