Geophysical transects of the Labrador Sea: Labrador to southwest Greenland

Abstract

In 1977 the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources, Hannover, carried out a large scale multichannel reflection seismic survey in the Labrador Sea. This survey provided an opportunity for the direct comparison of the geologic structure of the Labrador and Greenland margins. The seismic records across the Labrador Shelf show a thick, prograding sedimentary wedge consisting of several seismic sequences onlapping an acoustic basement that dips steeply seaward. The surface of the acoustic basement is irregular below the continental slope, indicating Late Cretaceous—Early Tertiary faulting. The thick sedimentary section below the slope is divided by an unconformity, tentatively identified as Late Tertiary in age, into two seismic megasequencies which can be subdivided. The acoustic basement on the Greenland side is also strongly faulted but is overlain, in the south, by a thin sedimentary section. The sediment cover thickens on the Greenland Shelf to the north as the shelf becomes wider. As with more southerly parts of the western Atlantic margin, a positive free-air anomaly (30–50 mgal) lies landward of the shelf break off Labrador and a smaller negative anomaly follows the base of the slope. Similar, but generally narrower features are observed along the Greenland margin. West of the negative anomaly off the Greenland slope a narrow band of lower amplitude positive anomalies tends to be associated with an acoustic basement high observed in the reflection profiles. A landward negative gradient in the simple Airy isostatic anomaly across this margin suggests that the ocean—continent boundary is related to this high. Detailed magnetic measurements across the northern Labrador margin show that well-developed oceanic anomalies trending north-northwest lie east of the large Labrador Shelf gravity high, beyond the 2000 m isobath. Landward of these magnetic anomalies is a quiet magnetic zone within which the linear gravity high is parallel to the shelf break and correlates with a deep, sediment-filled basin. It is inferred that oceanic-type crust or greatly-attenuated continental crust underlies this basin and that continental crust thickens markedly westward of the gravity high over a distance of about 50 km.