Review on Subaqueous Sediment Gravity Flow and Submarine Fan

Subaqueous sediment gravity flow is the volumetrically most important process transporting sediment across our planet, which forms its largest sediment accumulations (submarine fan). Based on the previous studies, we tried to clear up the concept, classification and identification of subaqueous sediment gravity flow, and introduced the progress of modern direct observation and submarine fan model. Turbidity current and debris flow are two of the most important parts of the gravity flow, the former deposits layer by layer with normal gradation while the latter is en masse settling with chaotic disorder. The turbidity current transformed into the debris flow during the transportation is called hybrid flow. The hyperpycnal flow is the turbidity current formed by flood discharges into the ocean/lake. Modern direct observations show that the turbidity current can contain dense basal layers and last for a week. The structure of turbidity current can be different from those surge-like turbidity current observed in laboratory. Submarine fans are mainly composed of channel, levee, lobe, background deposits and mass transport deposits, which should be studied by architecture analysis and hierarchical classification. The channel deposits extend narrowly with abundant erosion structures; levee deposits are composed of thin layer mud-silty turbidites, wedge thinning laterally; the lobe deposits extend well laterally with narrow range of grain size. The hierarchy of channel deposits is channel unit, channel complex and channel complex system. The hierarchy of lobe deposits is bed, lobe element, lobe and lobe complex.