Seismic Stratigraphy and Structure Off Panama City, Florida: ABSTRACT

Abstract

Approximately 1,240 km of multichannel seismic profiles along the continental shelf and upper slope off Panama City, Florida, in the vicinity of Destin dome and De Soto Canyon reveal several major and minor discontinuities in shelf-slope deposition. Geologic ages were assigned to these discontinuities by correlating the depth profiles with a previously described sparker line of a nearby crossing and from other geologic considerations. Depositional breaks of major magnitude occurred in middle Miocene and Early Cretaceous(?). Isopach maps of seven seismic stratigraphic units between Upper Jurassic-Cretaceous(?) and the present have been prepared. Earliest maximum sedimentation occurred in the southwest of the area of investigation, but shifted to the northeast and north in arly Miocene and back to the southwest in recent times. The doming in the area is maximum in the earliest units and has a major northwest-southeast axis. Later units show decreasing relief and the evolution of the major axis to a northeast-southwest trend. From late Miocene on, minimal doming is evident. The peak doming is northeast of the older structure, suggesting that the tectonic motions forming the dome had nearly stopped by the Jurassic-Cretaceous(?). Later sedimentation and compaction have almost obscured this feature and have generated extensional faults in some of the layers above the dome. The De Soto Canyon appears to be the only canyon that remains from a group of 10 or so that appear in a major erosion surface in the middle Miocene. End_of_Article - Last_Page 409------------