The “Sink” of the Danube River Basin: The Distal Danube Deep-Sea Fan

Type Proceedings paper
Date 2012
Language English
Author(s) Lericolais GillesORCID1, Bourget Julien2, Jorry StephanORCID3, Popescu Irina4, Abreu Victor5, Jouannic Gwenael6, Bayon Germain7
Affiliation(s) 1 : IFREMER, Direction of the European and International Affairs, 155 rue Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Issy les Moulineaux, F-92138 France
2 : Centre for Petroleum Geoscience, School of Earth and Environment, The University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley, WA 6009, Australia
3 : IFREMER, Centre de Brest, Géosciences Marines, BP 70, Plouzané, F-29280, France
4 : GeoEcoMar, 23-25 Dimitrie Onciul Street, RO-024053 Bucharest, Romania
5 : ExxonMobil Upstream Research Company, 5959 Las Colinas Blvd., Irving, Texas 75039, United State
6 : CNRS, UMR 7193, ISTeP, Case 129, 4, place Jussieu, cedex 05, Paris, F-75252, France
7 : IFREMER, Centre de Brest, Géosciences Marines, BP 70, Plouzané, F-29280, France
Meeting 32nd Annual GCSSEPM Foundation Bob F. Perkins Research Conference. December 2-5, 2012, Houston, Texas
Source New Understanding of the Petroleum Systems of Continental Margins of the World: 32nd Annual. Edited by Norman C. Rosen, Paul Weimer, Sylvia Maria Coutes dos Anjos, Sverre Henrickson, Edmundo Marques, Mike Mayall, Richard Fillon, Tony D'Agostino, Art Saller, Kurt Campion, Tim Huang, Rick Sarg, and Fred Schroeder. DOI 10.5724/gcs.12.32.0701. Vol. 32. 2012. P.701-735
Abstract The Danube River Basin and the Black Sea represent a unique natural laboratory for studying source to sink and global change. We will address information on the “active sink” of the system, which represents the area of active deposition: sea level variation, sediment balance, and neotectonics. Also, we will discuss the evolution and quantification of climate, tectonics, and eustasy on the sedimentation in the western Black Sea basin, along both southern and northern margins, obtained from understanding the Danube deep-sea fan processes and sedimentation.

In the last decade, many of the geosciences studies carried out in the Black Sea have focused on the Holocene marine transgression. This topic has been fully discussed and is still a matter of debate. Since the DSDP drillings, the lithology and mineralogy of deep sediments from the Black Sea have been well studied. However, only few recent studies have focused on the deep-sea morphology and turbidite sedimentation in the western Black Sea basin, in which the main depositional feature is the Danube submarine fan.

Oceanographic surveys in the Black Sea in 1998, 2002, and 2004 carried out in the framework of French-Romanian joint project and the European ASSEM-BLAGE (EVK3-CT-2002-00090) project have collected a large amount of data (Multibeam echo sounder data, CHIRP seismic, as well as Kullenberg and Calypso cores). This paper presents insights from recent coring and seismic data recovered at the boundary of influence of both the distal part of the Danube turbiditic system and the Turkish margin. This data set provides a good record of changes in the sedimentary supply and climatic changes in the surrounding Black Sea since the last 25 ka. Based on this study, we demonstrate that the deep basin deposits bear the record of the late Quaternary paleoenvironmental changes.

Finally, the western Black Sea basin constitutes an asymmetric subsident basin bordered by a northern passive margin containing confined mid-size, mud-rich turbiditic systems, and a tectonically active southern turbiditic ramp margin.
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Lericolais Gilles, Bourget Julien, Jorry Stephan, Popescu Irina, Abreu Victor, Jouannic Gwenael, Bayon Germain (2012). The “Sink” of the Danube River Basin: The Distal Danube Deep-Sea Fan. New Understanding of the Petroleum Systems of Continental Margins of the World: 32nd Annual. Edited by Norman C. Rosen, Paul Weimer, Sylvia Maria Coutes dos Anjos, Sverre Henrickson, Edmundo Marques, Mike Mayall, Richard Fillon, Tony D'Agostino, Art Saller, Kurt Campion, Tim Huang, Rick Sarg, and Fred Schroeder. DOI 10.5724/gcs.12.32.0701. Vol. 32. 2012. P.701-735. https://archimer.ifremer.fr/doc/00316/42695/