Skip to main content
U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Sedimentation and seismic stratigraphy of Sable Island Bank

Conference ·
OSTI ID:6682767
The seismic stratigraphy of Sable Island Bank provides a model for continental shelf sand-body accumulation. The Holocene Sable Island sand body is located 227 km offshore from Ha lifax, Nova Scotia. It covers an area of approximately 6,500 km/sup 2/ on the outer Scotian Shelf and contains a sand volume of 98 km/sup 3/. This region at 44/sup 0/N lat. experiences both high-energy North Atlantic storms and high-velocity tidal currents. Relative sea level has risen from depths of at least 50m 11,000 years ago and continues to rise at 33 mm/year today. The Holocene shelf sand body was derived from the transgressive reworking of Pleistocene proglacial sediments that were deposited during the most recent late Wisconsinan lowstand of sea level. The subaerial Sable Island sand body is lens shaped, 50 km long, 2 km wide, and up to 51 m thick. The island extends subaqueously into asymmetric spits, each over 30 km long and up to 45 m thick. South and west from Sable Island lies a system of shoreface-connected and shoreface-detached ridges that result from storm reworking.
OSTI ID:
6682767
Report Number(s):
CONF-880301-
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English