This publication reflects a growing appreciation of the extent to which turbidite depositional system development is fundamentally affected by basin-floor topography. In the many turbidite and turbidite hydrocarbon reservoirs, depositional patterns have been moderately to strongly confined by pre-existing slopes. This volume examines aspects of sediment dispersal and accumulation in deep-water systems where sea-floor topography has exerted a decisive control on deposition, and explores the associated controls on hydrocarbon reservoir architecture and heterogeneity.

Deep-water (below wave base) processes, although generally hidden from view, shape the sedimentary record of more than 65% of the Earth’s surface, including large parts of ancient mountain belts. This book aims to inform advanced-level undergraduate and postgraduate students, and professional Earth scientists with interests in physical oceanography and hydrocarbon exploration and production, about many of the important physical aspects of deep-water (mainly deep-marine) systems. The authors consider transport and deposition in the deep sea, trace-fossil assemblages, and facies stacking patterns as an archive of the underlying controls on deposit architecture (e.g., seismicity, climate change, autocyclicity). Topics include modern and ancient deep-water sedimentary environments, tectonic settings, and how basinal and extra-basinal processes generate the typical characteristics of basin slopes, submarine canyons, contourite mounds and drifts, submarine fans, basin floors and abyssal plains.