Migration of the lower North Palawan submarine canyon: characteristics and controls

ABSTRACT

The North Palawan Canyon is a large, previously undescribed submarine canyon that incises the continental shelf and slope of the southern South China Sea. Using multibeam bathymetric data and two-dimensional seismic reflection data, we have characterized current canyon morphology and documented lower-canyon migration in cross-section since the middle Miocene. We have also explored possible causes for the ancient migrations. The 175 km modern canyon is flanked by sediment waves outside its northern bank, and depositional lobes fan out from the canyon mouth. Over the past 15 million years, at least 20 cycles of significant canyon incising and infilling have occurred, along with significant canyon migration. This migration, as recorded in the sedimentary (seismic) record near a leftward bend in the canyon’s lower reach, can be divided into three stages: southward migration during the middle Miocene (averaging 1.24 km/m.y.), northward migration during the late Miocene (1.34 km/m.y.), and stationarity since the Pliocene. The overall zigzagging pattern of the canyon thalweg (as seen in cross-section through time) results from lateral and downstream migration in an aggradational environment. The early (middle to late Miocene) rapid zigzagging migration of the lower main channel, first southward and then northward, was probably associated with the strong collision of the North Palawan Block with the Philippine Mobile Belt, which would have triggered submarine instabilities and deformed the seafloor. The more recent (Pliocene and later) slowing or cessation of canyon migration is likely the result of the now quieter tectonic setting and long-term climatic cooling and drying.