THE PHYSICAL PROCESSES OF SEABED DISTURBANCE DURING ICEBERG GROUNDING AND SCOURING

Icebergs drifting in ocean currents over the Labrador continental shelf may contact and move through seabed sediments to create characteristically curvilinear features, commonly referred to as scours, which average 1-2 m in depth and about 30-40 m in width. Such scours may continue for several hundreds of metres or several kilometres. The period of seabed interaction may last from a few minutes to several months and results in modification of both the seabed sediments and the iceberg keel. When observed from submersible soon after their formation, scours exhibit morphological characteristics not seen in old, degraded scours. The scour trough, between two berm ridges, is generally flat-bottomed but is characterized by the presence of ridge-and-groove microtopography, with amplitudes up to 0.3 m developed parallel to the scour axis. These features are formed at the trailing edge of the keel by clastic material embedded in the ice and by open fissures in the ice. In places along the inner berm margins, ridges and grooves may be developed at an angle to the scour axis, reflecting lateral displacement of material towards the berm as the iceberg moves forward. Voids up to 1 m deep and 2 m wide occasionally truncate the ridges and grooves. Voids are formed following the dissolution of small (a few m3) masses of debris-laden ice that are mechanically broken off from the base of the keel and pressed into the seabed by the scouring iceberg. Initially low areas within the scour trough may preserve seafloor that has not been affected by ice-seabed interaction. In these regions deposition of bulldozed sediment from the surcharge at the leading edge of the keel may partially fill the narrow spaces beneath the keel in areas of initially low seabed elevation. Scour berms consist of in situ fractured but intact blocks of material on the inner flanks, and disarticulated blocks 1-2 m high along the berm crest. The outer berm slopes generally consist of pieces of larger blocks spalled from the berm crest resting in relatively finely comminuted, reworked material. The reworked material originates in the leading edge surcharge before being displaced to either side of the keel. Scour berms have irregular topography ranging in height from a few centimetres to as much as 6 m above the seabed. Isolated irregularly-shaped mounds beyond the outer berm may represent pieces of cohesive sediment that originated at the berm crest as overhangs and which subsequently collapsed.