Late Quaternary evolution of channel and lobe complexes of Monterey Fan

The modern Monterey submarine fan, one of the largest deep-water deposits off the western US, is composed of two major turbidite systems: the Neogene Lower Turbidite System (LTS) and the late Quaternary Upper Turbidite System (UTS). The areally extensive LTS is a distal deposit with low-relief, poorly defined channels, overbank, and lower-fan elements. The younger UTS comprises almost half of the total fan volume and was initiated in the late Pleistocene from canyons in the Monterey Bay area. Rapidly prograding high-relief, channel-levee complexes dominated deposition early in the UTS with periodic avulsion events. In the last few 100 ka, much of the sediment bypassed the northern fan as a result of allocyclic controls, and deposition is simultaneously occurring on a sandy lobe with low-relief channels and on an adjacent detached muddier lobe built from reconfinement of overbank flow from the northern high-relief channels. During the relatively short-lived UTS deposition, at least seven different channel types and two lobe types were formed. This study provides a significant reinterpretation of the depositional history of Monterey Fan by incorporating all available unpublished geophysical data.