Abstract
Canada Basin of the Arctic Ocean is the least studied ocean basin in the World. Marine seismic field programs were conducted over the past 6 years using Canadian and American icebreakers. These expeditions acquired more than 14,000 line-km of multibeam bathymetric and multi-channel seismic reflection data over abyssal plain, continental rise and slope regions of Canada Basin; areas where little or no seismic reflection data existed previously. Canada Basin is a turbidite-filled basin with flat-lying reflections correlateable over 100s of km. For the upper half of the sedimentary succession, evidence of sedimentary processes other than turbidity current deposition is rare. The Canadian Archipelago and Beaufort Sea margins host stacked mass transport deposits from which many of these turbidites appear to derive. The stratigraphic succession of the MacKenzie River fan is dominated by mass transport deposits; one such complex is in excess of 132,000 km2 in area and underlies much of the southern abyssal plain. The modern seafloor is also scarred with escarpments and mass failure deposits; evidence that submarine landsliding is an ongoing process. In its latest phase of development, Canada Basin is geomorphologically confined with stable oceanographic structure, resulting in restricted depositional/reworking processes. The sedimentary record, therefore, underscores the significance of mass-transport processes in providing sediments to oceanic abyssal plains as few other basins are able to do.
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Acknowledgments
The authors would like to express their appreciation to the officers and crew of the Canadian icebreaker Louis S. St-Laurent and the US Icebreaker Healy, as well as to the Canadian and US Extended Continental Shelf mapping programs. There are too many colleagues involved in data acquisition and analysis to name, but to all of them, we thank you. D. Long and M. Jakobsson conducted the external review for publication. P. Hart, J. Chaytor, D. C. Campbell and J. Shaw conducted internal reviews. The authors would like to express our appreciation to all of these reviewers.
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Mosher, D.C., Shimeld, J., Hutchinson, D., Lebedeva-Ivanova, N., Chapman, C.B. (2012). Submarine Landslides in Arctic Sedimentation: Canada Basin. In: Yamada, Y., et al. Submarine Mass Movements and Their Consequences. Advances in Natural and Technological Hazards Research, vol 31. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2162-3_13
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2162-3_13
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