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Submarine canyon morphologies in the Gulf of Palermo (Southern Tyrrhenian Sea) and possible implications for geo-hazard

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Abstract

The continental shelf and the upper slope of the Gulf of Palermo (Southern Tyrrhenian Sea) in the depth interval ranging from 50 to 1,500 m were mapped for the first time with Multi Beam echosounder and high resolution seismic. Seven submarine canyons are confined to the upper slope or indent the shelf-edge and enter the Palermo intraslope basin at a depth of around 1,300 m. The canyons evolved through concurrent top-down turbiditic processes and bottom-up retrogressive mass failures. Most of the mass failure features of the area are related to canyon-shaping processes and only few of them are not confined to the upper slope. In general, these features probably do not represent a significant tsunami hazard along the coast. The geological element that controls the evolution of the canyons and induces sediment instability corresponds to the steep slope gradient, especially in the western sector of the Gulf, where the steepest canyons are located. The structural features mapped in the Palermo offshore contributed to the regulation of mass failure processes in the area, with direct faults and antiform structures coinciding with some of the canyon heads. Furthermore, the occurrence of pockmarks and highs that probably consist of authigenic carbonates above faulted and folded strata suggests a local relationship between structural control, fluid escape processes and mass failure. This paper presents a valuable high-resolution morphologic dataset of the Gulf of Palermo, which constitutes a reliable base for evaluating the geo-hazard potential related to slope failure in the area.

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Acknowledgments

We gratefully acknowledge the Italian National Research Projects MaGIC (Marine Geological Hazard along the Italian Coast) funded by the Italian Civil Protection Department and CARG (Geological Maps of Italy) funded by the Italian Geological Survey. We thank the captains and the crews of the R/V “Thetis” and R/V “Universitatis” for their kind assistance during the surveys. We also acknowledge the Grup de Recerca de la Generalitat de Catalunya B-CSI (2009 SGR 146).

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  1. Unidad de Tecnología Marina, UTM, CSIC, Paseo Marítimo de la Barceloneta 37–49, 08003, Barcelona, Spain

    Claudio Lo Iacono

  2. Dipartimento di Geologia e Geodesia dell’Università di Palermo, Via Archirafi, 22, 90123, Palermo, Italy

    Attilio Sulli, Mauro Agate, Valeria Lo Presti, Fabrizio Pepe & Raimondo Catalano

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  1. Claudio Lo Iacono
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Correspondence to Claudio Lo Iacono.

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Lo Iacono, C., Sulli, A., Agate, M. et al. Submarine canyon morphologies in the Gulf of Palermo (Southern Tyrrhenian Sea) and possible implications for geo-hazard. Mar Geophys Res 32, 127–138 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11001-011-9118-0

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