Field Areas | Turbidites | The University of Aberdeen

Field Areas

Mexico (Baja California)

Our team worked in this area for 15 years to establish the architecture of a major slope channel system. This has involved detailed mapping of the sedimentary architecture, constraining the biostratigraphic and radiometric age of the system, the petrography, provenance, and micropaleontological and ichnological fingerprints of various elements of the system. We studied coarse-grained facies distribution for a better understanding of the bypass dominated channel architecture; distribution of thin bedded facies within channel belts and levees; vertical sequences as a means to identify slope channel architectures; provenance of the sediments within the channels as an indicator of vertical changes within a channel system; and the relationships between the channels and the background sedimentation of the slope.

We have also been working on deposits related to the Chicxulub meteorite impact, and the related landslide-triggered tsunamis.

Chile (Torres del Paine)

Our current research takes place within the Silla and Laguna Azul Synclines in the Torres del Paine National Park. The focus is the conglomeratic Lago Sofia Member and adjacent thin-bedded turbidites (TBTs) of the Cerro Toro Formation. The thin bedded turbidites and the coarse-grained channelized deposits demonstrate the relationship between a laterally-migrating chanel system and its levees. Ongoing work focuses on understanding why the facies within this channel system differ from those in the San Fernando slope channel system in Mexico.

Tyrrhenian Sea (Italy)

Our partners Fabiano Gamberi and Marzia Rovere at ISMAR in Bologna have been working on this area for almost 20 years. In 2013 we undertook a joint research cruise to collect sub-bottom profiles (CHIRP), detailed multi-beam surveys to complement the already existing data, and numerous sediment cores from the overbank areas of the channels. A PhD was completed on this area in 2015 (available on this site) investigating the relationships between multiple contemporaneously active slope channels and the adjacent thin-bedded turbidites.

USA (California)

Outcrops of the Miocene-Pliocene Capistrano Formation at San Clemente, California, provide an excellent exposure of sandy slope channel fills that are cut into the strongly bioturbated muddy slope of the Miocene Monterey Formation. We have focused on the sedimentology and depositional model for this widely-used slope channel system analogue. Pan Li completed a study on the internal channel architecture, geometries of the channel fills at San Clemente, with special attention to its facies distribution and associated reservoir architecture. This is included in his PhD and subsequent paper (both available to sponsors on this site). The primary aim of his study was trying to understand better the distribution of baffles and barriers within this slope channel system.

Argentina (Cerro Bola)

The middle Carboniferous syn-glacial Paganzo Group succession is spectacularly well-exposed in La Rioja and San Juan province and includes turbidites and subordinate hybrid beds in continuously exposed confined sheets and lobe systems. They also include a number of major mass transport deposits, and megabeds of hybrid and transitional flow types. A Brazilian PhD (available ) provides the basis for a detailed study of bed-scale architecture of the highly confined to unconfined turbidite systems. Well-exposed thick (≤180m) mass transport deposits of seismic scale have served as case study of strain distribution, substrate interaction and ponding of turbidites the surface relief. They contain large blocks derived from underlying sediments as well as rafts of protolith, ranging up to 100 meters length and tens of meters in thickness.