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The Influence of Topography on the Deposition of Turbidites

OMAR AL-JA'AIDI, BEN KNELLER, & BILL MCCAFFREY, School of Earth Sciences, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, West Yorkshire, UK.

 

Around the world, turbidite sands have become increasingly important targets for many exploration and production companies. Profitable exploitation of these turbidite reservoirs requires detailed understanding of their geometries and facies distributions. This, in turn, requires an understanding of the processes which controlled turbidity current deposition. The application of new flume-based and theoretical depositional models have improved our ability to understand and predict depositional geometries within topographically influenced turbidite systems.

Submarine fans of Late Palaeocene and Early Eocene age form important hydrocarbon reservoirs in the Central North Sea, and provide a good case study of the influence of halokinesis-induced topography. Here, we examine the role played by pre-existing diapiric sea floor topography on deposit geometry. We show some flume experiments in which turbidity currents were released via a lock exchange mechanism and then allowed to interact with circular obstacles which were intended to model diapirs. The experiments can be used to (a) study the interaction of turbidity currents with topography, (b) examine the geometry variations deposited around topography, (c) develop an insight into the behaviour of real systems both at outcrop and in the subsurface.