Glacially related gullies on the upper continental slope, SW Barents Sea margin

Abstract

During the Late Weichselian glaciation an ice stream flowed westwards along the Bear Island Trough in the Norwegian Barents Sea, carrying large amounts of glacial debris to the shelf edge to be deposited on the Bear Island Trough–Mouth Fan (e.g. Andreassen et al. 2008). On heavily iceberg-ploughed shallower banks such as Tromsoflaket, south of the Bear Island Trough (Fig. 1), the ice sheet was less active although not necessarily frozen to its bed. Well-developed systems of gullies occur on the upper continental slope west of Tromsoflaket and on the southern flank of the Bear Island Fan, with their initiation points at or close to the shelf edge. Fig. 1. Gullies on the upper slope of the SW Barents Sea. ( a ) Shaded-relief image from MAREANO (www.mareano.no) of relatively shallow gullies on the southern part of the Bear Island Fan (ch is a channel at the distal end of a gully system). ( b ) Shaded-relief image of deeper gullies on the upper slope west of Tromsoflaket (ss, slide scars; dg, deepest gully of about 120 m). Acquisition system for (a) and (b) Kongsberg EM710. Frequency 70 kHz. Grid-cell size 10 m. Sun illumination from the NW. ( c ) Bathymetric cross-profiles of gullies in …