Abstract
Recently acquired swath bathymetry, high-resolution seismic profiles and bottom sediment samples have revealed the presence of large-scale fine-grained sediment waves over the Gulf of Valencia continental slope. Like many other deep-water sediment waves, these features were previously attributed to gravitational slope failure related to creep-like deformation, and have now been reinterpreted as sediment wave fields extending from 250 m depth to the continental rise at ~850 m depth. Sediment wave lengths range between 500 and 1000 m and maximum wave heights of up to 50 m are found on the upper slope, decreasing downslope to a minimum height of 2 m. Seismic profiles showed continuous internal reflectors and several sediment wave packages were differentiated, being thicker on the crest of each wave and thinner on the downslope flank, indicating that these sediment waves are upslope-migrating. The sediment wave formation process was inferred from contemporary hydrodynamic observations, and internal wave activity is suggested to be the most probable mechanism for the sediment transport and deposition and subsequent maintenance of the sediment waves over the Gulf of Valencia continental slope.
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Acknowledgments
This work was funded by the project COSTEM (CMT2009-07806) and FORMED (CGL2012-33989). The authors wish to thank the captain and the crew of the R/V García del Cid and the R/V Vizconde de Eza, and also the UTM technicians and J. Pozo and M. Lloret from the Instrumental Service, for their assistance. The author M. Ribó was supported by a FPI grant (Ref. BES-2010-029949) from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness. P. Masqué acknowledges the financial support through the ICREA Academia award and a Gledden Visiting Fellowship awarded by the Institute of Advanced Studies at the University of Western Australia.
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Ribó, M. et al. (2017). Large-Scale Fine-Grained Sediment Waves Over the Gulf of Valencia Continental Slope (NW Mediterranean). In: Guillén, J., Acosta, J., Chiocci, F., Palanques, A. (eds) Atlas of Bedforms in the Western Mediterranean. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33940-5_41
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33940-5_41
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