The Probable Whole of Slope Submarine Landslides of Southeast Queensland, Australia.

Abstract:

A research cruise aboard the RV Southern Surveyor (SS2013-V01) conducted in January 2013 offshore east Australia collected regional bathymetric data for the seabed of the continental margin of southern Queensland for the seabed bounded by Noosa Heads in the south and Indian Head, Fraser Island in the north. This newly mapped area presents a particularly steep portion of continental slope (5^o to 10 ^o) that presents numerous submarine landslides, including two ‘whole-of-slope’ features (The Wide Bay Canyon, and Inskip Slides. The slope is also dissected by three large submarine canyons offshore northern Fraser Island, Wide Bay and Noosa Heads (i.e. the Fraser Canyons, the Wide Bay Canyon and the Noosa Canyon). Dredge and core samples were collected from slide scars in the northern, central and southern areas of the bathymetric survey area. The initial examination of the area’s bathymetry, the core and dredge sample sedimentology, and determination of biostratigraphic ages for these sediment samples indicates that the larger, submarine slides present in this study area have probably been shed from the slope since the late Pliocene and that canyon incision is currently active on this portion of the slope. In one case, canyon incision is partly responsible for generating slides due to undercutting and removal of the toe of the slope. Slope sediments are dominantly comprised of hemipelagic muds but the presence of massive coarse sands and graded sands in some cores above erosion surfaces that cut into slope mud units is interpreted to indicate that areas of the southern Queensland continental slope are probably subjected to abrasion by grain-flows and turbidites comprised of shelf-derived sands and upper slope sediment. The results from this voyage confirms and extends previous work on the southeastern Australian continental margin that indicates that sediment transport from the shelf to deep water on this margin is dominated by gravity mass transport and that the margin is in an active phase of deconstruction.