Tectonic and eustatic controls of late quaternary shelf sedimentation along the Central California (Santa Cruz) continental margin: high-resolution seismic stratigraphic evidence

Abstract

A high-resolution “uniboom”, seismic stratigraphic investigation of a portion of the central California continental shelf has demonstrated that depositional patterns and sequences are controlled largely by an interplay of glacioeustatic sea-level fluctuations superimposed on local tectonics. Wrench tectonics, associated with active right-lateral shear along the San Gregorio fault zone, and the Pigeon Point Basement High control the location, distribution and overall geometry of depositional sequences via en echelon folding and differential subsidence. Areas of relatively thick and thin late Quaternary sediments conform in large part with structures produced during wrenching. Glacioeustatic sea-level oscillations have also shaped depositional patterns and sequences. Correlation of our seismic stratigraphic data with a southern California continental margin sea-level curve, suggests that during the last glacial maximum, approximately 18,000 yrs ago, a relative lowstand resulted in the erosion of a distinct unconformity upon which late Quaternary sediments have accumulated. A rapid rise of sea level to a relative stillstand, approximately 12,000 yrs ago, produced a concave-up, marine terrace profile across the mid-shelf, that has since been infilled with as much as 22 m of Holocene clastic sediments. A relative drop of sea level, approximately 11,000 yrs ago, allowed sediments to build seaward as a series of prograding clinoforms that form the basal sequences of the late Quaternary sediment fill. The succeeding Holocene transgression partially eroded the top of this earlier regressive sequence, and has now established a typical, wave-graded shelf along which sediments fine in a seaward direction to water depths of 90–100 m. At greater shelf water depths, surface sediments coarsen and appear to be relicts of previous relative sea-level lowstands. The presence of now submerged and buried marine terraces along both the central and southern California continental margins, at elevations lower than modern terraces actively forming today, suggests that flights of raised marine terraces may not always decrease in age with decreasing elevation, as is commonly assumed for relative dating. Because sea-level fluctuations during at least the past 700,000 yrs, have been both numerous and of unequal magnitudes, it is likely that age inversions will occur within any given flight of raised Quaternary marine terraces along tectonically active continental margins.