Slope Stability of Europe`s Passive Continental Margins; Subproject of the ESF-Euromargins project

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Improved knowledge of the past and better understanding of the present seabed stability are essential for an understanding of the sediment dynamics of the European continental margins as a whole. Submarine slides are common and very effective mechanisms of sediment transfer from shelf and upper slope to deep-sea basins. During one single event enormous sediment volumes can be transported on very gentle slopes over distances exceeding hundreds of kilometres. Typically such events can last from less than an hour to days as documented by the 1992 Grand Banks submarine slide event that also created a tsunami, which caused devastation on adjacent coastal lowlands. In this multidisciplinary international project coordinated by Prof. Dr. J. Mienert (University of Tromso, Norway) we focus on systematic advancement in our understanding of sediment dynamics of submarine slides in the context of global change. We prioritise the research objectives (1) slide headwall development on upper continental slopes, (2) slope stability of river-fed and carbonate margins, (3) slope stability of glacier-fed siliciclastic margins, (4) geo-mechanical controls on the formation and trigger mechanisms of submarine slides, (5) numerical modelling of sediment break up, mobility and run out, and (6) slide frequencies in regions of long-term instability in relation to sea-level change. Within the subproject we concentrate on stratigraphical, sedimentological and geochemical investigations of sediment cores from the northern Svalbard continental margin / Yermac Area (Arctic Ocean). The overall interest is to identify the sediment characteristics of slides, to study their frequency and its relationship to climate change, and to quantify the sediment transfer from the shelf and upper slope to the deep-sea basin.