Submarine mass movements around the iberian Peninsula. The building of continental margins through hazardous processes

Abstract

Submarine mass movements, such as those which occur in all environments in every ocean of the world, are widely distributed across the Iberian continental margins. A lack of consistent data from various areas around the Iberian Peninsula makes it difficult to precisely understand their role in the sedimentary record. However, all the studies carried out over the past two decades reveal that they are a recurrent and widespread sedimentary process that may represent a significant geohazard. The majority of submarine mass movements observed in both the Mediterranean and Atlantic margins of the Iberian Peninsula have been generically identified as Mass Transport Deposits, but debris flows, slides, slumps and turbidites are common. Only a few remarkable examples involve huge volumes of sediment covering large areas (such as ~500 km3 and ~6x104 km2), but more moderate deposits (<200 km2) are frequently found on the seafloor or embedded in the sedimentary sequences, building margins and basins.