The Gulf of Mexico, 130 miles south of Galveston, Texas -- An international team of marine research scientists working for the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) have found new evidence that links catastrophic sand avalanches in deep Gulf waters to rapid sea level changes. By analyzing downhole measurements and freshly retrieved sediment cores, IODP scientists are reconstructing the history of a basin formed approximately 20,000 years ago, when sea level fell so low that the Texas shoreline shifted almost 100 miles to the south. The data are important to reconstructing climate change history and gathering insights about the development and placement of natural resources, particularly gas and oil deposits.

"The basin we chose to study is the ultimate sink of sediments transported by the Brazos and Trinity Rivers," explains cochief scientist Peter Flemings of Pennsylvania State University's Geosciences Department. "Over the last 120,000 years, the basin accumulated enough sand and mud to cover the entire city of Houston with a 20-foot thick layer." During the last glacial period, sediments discharged by rivers such as the Brazos and Trinity formed beaches and deltas near the continental shelf's edge. Catastrophic submarine sand avalanches, called turbidity currents, carried the sediments into the deep-water Gulf of Mexico, where they accumulated in bowl-shaped basins. A map of the area under study is online at http://iodp.tamu.edu/scienceops/expeditions/exp308.html

Carlos Pirmez, a research geologist with Shell International E&P in Houston and a member of the science party explains, "Bowl-shaped basins such as the Brazos Basin IV are now buried thousands of meters beneath the Gulf of Mexico seafloor and host billions of barrels of oil and gas. Sediment records we acquire from the young basin off Texan shores will boost our understanding of how deeply buried reservoirs are form
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7-Jul-2005

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