--> ABSTRACT: GLORIA Side-Scan Imagery of Aleutian Basin, Bering Sea Slope and Abyssal Plain, by P. R. Carlson, A. K. Cooper, J. V. Gardner, H. A. Karl, M. S. Marlow, A. J. Stevenson, Q. Huggett, N. Kenyon, and L. Parson; #91038 (2010)

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GLORIA Side-Scan Imagery of Aleutian Basin, Bering Sea Slope and Abyssal Plain

P. R. Carlson, A. K. Cooper, J. V. Gardner, H. A. Karl, M. S. Marlow, A. J. Stevenson, Q. Huggett, N. Kenyon, L. Parson

During July-September 1986, about 700,000 km2 of continental slope and abyssal plain of the Aleutian basin, Bering Sea, were insonified with GLORIA (Geological Long Range Inclined Asdic) side-scan sonar. A sonar mosaic displays prominent geomorphic features including the massive submarine canyons of the Beringian and the northern Aleutian Ridge slopes and shows well-defined sediment patterns including large deep-sea channels and fan systems on the Aleutian basin abyssal plain. Dominant erosional and sediment transport processes on both the Beringian and the Aleutian Ridge slopes include varieties of mass movement that range from small debris flows and slides to massive slides and slumps of blocks measuring kilometers in dimension. Sediment-flow patterns that ap ear to be formed by sheet flow rather than channelized flow extend basinward from the numerous canyons and gullies that incise the slopes of the Beringian margin and of Bowers Ridge and some places along the Aleutian Ridge. These Beringian and Bowers canyon sediment sources, however, appear to have contributed less modern sediment to the Aleutian basin than the large, well-defined channel systems that emanate from Bering, Umnak, and Amchitka submarine canyons and extend for several hundred kilometers across the abyssal plain. This GLORIA imagery emphasizes the important contribution of the Aleutian Ridge to modern sedimentation in the deep Bering Sea.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #91038©1987 AAPG Annual Convention, Los Angeles, California, June 7-10, 1987.