Abstract
The Amazon Fan is one of the largest deep-sea fans in the modern oceans and extends from the continental shelf off north-east Brazil downslope for c. 700 km to depths greater than 4700 m, where it merges with the Demerara and Ceara abyssal plains (Fig. 18.1). Damuth (1973) and Damuth and Kumar (1975) first described the morphology, sedimentation processes and architectural elements of the fan based on high-resolution (100 Hz airgun and 3.5 kHz PDR sonar) seismic, piston-core and seismic-refraction data. These studies revealed that a network of large, leveed distributary channels radiate outward down the fan surface (Figs 18.1–18.3). Subsequently, Damuth and Embley (1981) identified and mapped large mass-transport deposits (slides/debris-flow complexes) of regional extent on the present-day fan surface (Fig. 18.1).
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References
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Damuth, J.E., Flood, R.D., Pirmez, C., Manley, P.L. (1995). Architectural elements and depositional processes of Amazon Deep-sea Fan imaged by long-range sidescan sonar (GLORIA), bathymetric swath-mapping (Sea Beam), high-resolution seismic and piston-core data. In: Pickering, K.T., Hiscott, R.N., Kenyon, N.H., Ricci Lucchi, F., Smith, R.D.A. (eds) Atlas of Deep Water Environments. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-1234-5_19
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-1234-5_19
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