Michael Giles

B.Sc., Honours Earth Sciences, Dalhousie University (2007)

M. Sc. Thesis

Mass Transport Processes on the Southwestern Newfoundland Margin, Eastern Canada: Mechanisms for Deep Water Sediment Transport

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The importance of sediment mass failure processes in the evolution of passive continental margins is increasingly recognized amongst the scientific community. The southwestern Newfoundland margin is the location of the tsunami-inducing 1929 Grand Bank's Landslide and today is an active exploration frontier. Seismic reflection data from the slope provides evidence of successive mass failures at a variety of scales. The occurrence of stacked, regionally extensive mass transport deposits (MTDs) with volumes up to 150 km3 indicates that sediment mass transport was a significant process in the evolution of the margin during the Cenozoic. Initiation of failures on the southwestern Newfoundland margin is attributed to earthquakes. Frequency of earthquakes and pre-conditioning factors explain differences in size of MTDs on the margin. Late Miocene MTDs were larger due to high sedimentation rates and low frequency earthquakes. Younger sediment failures on the margin were smaller due to high sedimentation rates and higher frequency earthquakes which prevented thick sediment accumulation between failures. This study shows the prevalence of MTD's in the Cenozoic stratigraphic succession of the southwestern Newfoundland continental margin. Clearly, sedimentation and exploration models of continental slope environments must take better account of the mass failure processes for sedimentation distribution of source/reservoir/trap development.

Pages: 163

Supervisors: D. Mosher / Grant Wach