Seismic Expression of Deep-water Slope Channel Complex & Frontal Splay Architectural Elements: Calibration with Outcrop & Sea Floor Analogues from Southern and Eastern Turkey & Various Modern Systems

Abstract

Summary Frontal splays and slope channel complexes make up the bulk of deep-water depocentre volume. Slope channel complexes, often fed through a series of gullies of upper slope/shelfal canyons, are well known and exceptional examples are exposed in turbidite-filled basins of southern and eastern Turkey. Frontal splays are located at or beyond feeder channel mouths, of variable dimension and character, they range in grain size from gravel to silt and yet appear to have a predictable and narrow range of geometry. Frontal splays in particular remain one of the most undersampled and unimaged deep-water sedimentary features, are often seen on seismic data where they straddle the resolution limits, and as a result there is no accepted general model for them. The terminology for deep-water depositional bodies that are not in erosionally based features remains highly inconsistent, with terms like ‘lobes’, ‘splays’, ‘frontal splays’, ‘mouth lobes’, ‘distributary lobes’, ‘channelised lobes’, ‘suprafan lobes’ etc all vying for widespread usage and promoting confusion across the study of modern and outcrop deep-water sedimentary systems and their reservoir equivalents. It is no surprise that general accepted principles of architecture, rock property distribution, body geometry, and even location on the sea floor, are not yet in place.