Field Areas | Turbidites | The University of Aberdeen

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.

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.