Scholarly record
SHELF COLLAPSE PROCESSES ON THE LABRADOR SEA MARGIN
Abstract
Development of passive margin, due to thermal cooling of the stretch lithosphere, creates a large accommodation space subsequently filled with sediments brought from the emerging continent once the river system is established [1]. This combination of rapid subsidence and sedimentation generates an instable architecture with large shelf progradation on top of early post-rift sediments [5]. Given the typical fine grain lithology of these deposits, in most of the cases they become overpressure and an ideally zone for a detachment once the slope condition and stability is affected. The shelf collapse will generate a massive submarine land slide and formation of both extensional and compressional domain [1]. Such geometries can also be recognized on the Labrador Sea shelf, where large scale (more than 50 km in length) collapse structures are affecting the Upper Cretaceous-Paleogene age strata. The Labrador Sea is the abandoned branch of North Atlantic rift triple junction, which opens during Lower Cretaceous times in a continental domain, with instalment of spreading center by Upper Cretaceous times, Campanian-Maastrichtian [2]. The oceanic crust/lithosphere development and subsequent expansion continue in the basin center while the rapid cooling and sinking (thermal subsidence) of the previous stretched domain, led to the development of a passive margin. The new created accommodation space has been feed with sediments from the nearby continent, uplifted and eroded, with the accumulation of more than 6 km of sediments. In the current study we are using the 2D regional seismic data to interpret the geometry of the shelf collapse structures. In our area of interest we have identified two independent structures and the next step was to understand the processes that led to the instability and shelf collapse
Publication Impact Profile
- Captures
- Mendeley - Readers: 2
Publication details
References3
Allen, P.A., Allen, J.R., 2013. Basin Analysis: Principles and Application to Petroleum Play Assessment, 3rd Edition. Wiley-Blackwell, New Jersey, USA.
Dickie, K., Keen, C.E., Williams, G.L., Dehler R, S.A., 2011. Tectonostratigraphic evolution of the Labrador margin, Atlantic Canada’’ Marine and Petroleum Geology, ISSN 0264-8172, Volume 28, Issue 9, pp. 1663-1675.
Prosser, S., 1993. Rift-related linked depositional systems and their seismic expression. Geological Society, London, Special Publications 71, 35.
View or Download full articleAccess options
SWS access login
Login as SWS Scientific CommitteeLogin as SWS Scientific PartnerLogin as SWS AuthorAuthors and approved SWS contributors will read and export their own linked papers after identity matching by SWS profile, email and SGEM GlobalID.
For librarian assistance: [email protected]
Purchase Instant Access
- Article can be downloaded after successful payment.
- Article may be used according to SWS library access terms.
- Article cannot be redistributed.