A 1.4-Billion-Pixel Map of the Gulf of Mexico Seafloor
By K. V. Kramer and W. W. Shedd 24 May 2017
The geology of the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) is dynamic, driven not by plate tectonics but by the movement of subsurface bodies of salt. Salt deposits, a remnant of an ocean that existed some 200 million years ago, behave in a certain way when overlain by heavy sediments. They compact, deform, squeeze into cracks, and balloon into overlying material.
Salt tectonics sculpt the geologic strata and seafloor in the Gulf of Mexico like few other places on Earth.
Such salt tectonics continue to sculpt the geologic strata and seafloor in the GOM like few other places on Earth. Because of this salt tectonism and a steady supply of sediment delivered to the basin by rivers, the GOM’s seafloor is a terrain continually in flux. Bathymetry is ripe with active faults and escarpments, slump blocks and slides, canyons and channels, sediment waves, pockmarks and mud volcanoes, and other natural oil and gas seeps.
https://eos.org/project-updates/a-1-4-billion-pixel-map-of-the-gulf-of-mexico-seafloor
