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Sediment Gravity Flow

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  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Snow, Ice and Glaciers

Part of the book series: Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series ((EESS))

Synonyms

Density currents; Gravity currents; Mass flows; Sediment flows

Definition

Sediment gravity flows are mixtures of water and sediment particles where the gravity acting on the sediment particles moves the fluid, in contrast to rivers, where the fluid moves the particles.

Introduction

Sediment gravity flows are catastrophic subaerial and subaqueous events that occur at various frequencies. An event can originate from sliding of unstable sediment mass on a slope, in which case the trigger is often by storm, tidal wave, seismic shock, or heavy rainfall. It can also originate from flood wave in a river that debouches onto the delta slope, where it, if denser than the basin water, first plunges down as hyperpycnal flow and continues as sediment gravity flow.

Sediment gravity flows have the ability to transport large masses of coarse-grained sediment into places, where otherwise only fines are deposited from suspension. Their deposits have been found in oceanic basins at 5 km depth at...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Geosciences, EUROTANK Laboratories, P.O. Box 80.021, 3508, TA Utrecht, The Netherlands

    George Postma

Authors
  1. George Postma
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to George Postma .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, USA

    Vijay P. Singh

  2. New Delhi, India

    Pratap Singh

  3. University of Dayton, Dayton, Ohio, USA

    Umesh K. Haritashya

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Postma, G. (2011). Sediment Gravity Flow. In: Singh, V.P., Singh, P., Haritashya, U.K. (eds) Encyclopedia of Snow, Ice and Glaciers. Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2642-2_476

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