Submarine channels have been important throughout geologic time for feeding globally significant volumes of sediment from land to the deep sea. Modern observations show that submarine channels can be sculpted by supercritical turbidity currents (seafloor sediment flows) that can generate upstream-migrating bedforms with a crescentic planform. In order to accurately interpret supercritical flows and depositional environments in the geologic record, it is important to be able to recognize the depositional signature of crescentic bedforms. Field geologists commonly link scour fills containing massive sands to crescentic bedforms, whereas models of turbidity currents produce deposits dominated by back-stepping beds. Here we reconcile this apparent contradiction by presenting the most detailed study yet that combines direct flow observations, time-lapse seabed mapping, and sediment cores, thus providing the link from flow process to depositional product. These data were collected within the proximal part of a submarine channel on the Squamish Delta, Canada. We demonstrate that bedform migration initially produces back-stepping beds of sand. However, these back-stepping beds are partially eroded by further bedform migration during subsequent flows, resulting in scour fills containing massive sand. As a result, our observations better match the depositional architecture of upstream-migrating bedforms produced by fluvial models, despite the fact that they formed beneath turbidity currents.

Submarine channel systems convey terrestrially derived detritus from shallow-marine environments to some of the largest sediment accumulations on Earth, submarine fans. The stratigraphic record of submarine slope channels includes heterogeneous, composite deposits that provide evidence for erosion, sediment bypass, and deposition. However, the timing and duration of these processes is poorly constrained over geologic time scales. We integrate geochronology with detailed stratigraphic characterization to temporally constrain the stratigraphic evolution recorded by horizontally to vertically aligned channel-fill stacking patterns in a Nanaimo Group channel system exposed on Hornby and Denman Islands, British Columbia, Canada. Twelve detrital zircon samples (n = 300/sample) were used to calculate maximum depositional ages, which identified a new age range for the succession from ca. 79 to 63 Ma. We document five phases of submarine-channel evolution over 16.0 ± 1.7 m.y. including: an initial phase dominated by incision, sediment bypass, and limited deposition (phase 1); followed by increasingly shorter and more rapid phases of deposition on the slope by laterally migrating (phase 2) and aggrading channels (phase 3); a long period of deep incision (phase 4); and a final rapid phase of vertical channel aggradation (phase 5). Our results suggest that ∼60% of the evolutionary history of the submarine channel system is captured in an incomplete, poorly preserved record of incision and sediment bypass, which makes up <20% of outcropping stratigraphy. Our findings are applicable to interpreting submarine channel-system evolution in ancient and modern settings worldwide and fundamentally important to understanding long-term sediment dispersal in the deep sea.

Submarine channel-systems are globally prevalent on continental margins and their deposits record the transfer of significant volumes of sediment from continental catchments to deep-water environments. These deposits contain signals of past events that can provide critical insight into the geological history of an area, including the long-term (>1 Ma) controls on sedimentation. Well-exposed outcrops of the Late Cretaceous Nanaimo Group, British Columbia, Canada, provide an opportunity to investigate long-term sediment-routing in a tectonically active setting. This study combines detrital zircon geochronology with stratigraphic analysis to establish a robust, basin-wide palaeogeographic framework that constrains the timing and distribution of coarse-grained sediment transport and deposition in the Nanaimo forearc basin. Three south-west trending submarine conduits are documented along a 135 km long strike-oriented transect, parallel to the north-west/south-east trending basin. Composite conduit deposits are 350 to 700 m thick, 4 to 16 km wide, and record substantial delivery of coarsegrained detritus (up to boulder-sized clasts) within submarine channel-lev ee systems. Maximum depositional ages derived from detrital zircon datasets constrain contemporaneous sediment transfer and deposition at each conduit location, which spanned between 73Á5 AE 1Á3 Ma to 69Á1 AE 1Á1 Ma around the Campanian-Maastrichtian boundary. Submarine conduits are spaced at 40 km and 70 km, and were likely connected to fluvial drainage systems sourced in uplifted catchments. Widespread, coarse-grained deposits suggest that surface uplift associated with concurrent regional events (such as deformation and/or magma emplacement) along the North American margin may have promoted sediment delivery to the deep-water basin. Comparisons to modern and ancient analogues support palaeogeographic interpretations, as well as the interpretation that pervasive coarse-grained deep-water sediment delivery was linked to tectonic activity. The integrated stratigraphicgeochronological approach used provides unique insight into the influence of regional tectonics on continental margin physiography and the nature of deep-water sediment dispersal.

The along-strike variability in sediment provenance within the Nanaimo basin is important for understanding the tectonic evolution of North America’s Late Cretaceous Pacific margin, providing context for paleogeographic reconstructions. Here, we provide 35 point-counted sandstone samples and 22 new detrital zircon samples from the Nanaimo basin. These new detrital zircon samples compose a portion of a basin-wide data set (N = 49, n = 10,942) that is leveraged to discern spatio-temporal changes in sediment provenance. Provenance data demonstrates that the majority of Nanaimo basin strata were sourced from regions within and east of the Coast Mountains Batholith, while only the southernmost Nanaimo basin, exposed in the San Juan Islands, was supplied sediment from the North Cascade thrust system. Additionally, near-identical age modes and synchronous changes in detrital zircon facies are used to hypothesize a correlation between the Nanaimo Group and the protolith of the Swakane Gneiss. These observations, along with previously identified events in the Cordillera, are used to define two basin-wide events that affected the Nanaimo basin: the first at 84 Ma and the second at 72 Ma. The first event is correlated to the onset of Kula-Farallon spreading, which affected basin subsidence, introduced Proterozoic detrital zircon to the central and southern Nanaimo basin, and uplifted the North Cascade thrust system. The second basin-wide event, which is speculated to have been driven by increased rates of subduction and obliquity, resulted in localized high-flux events in the arc, increased exhumation of the Cascade Crystalline Core, underplating of the Swakane Gneiss, and coarse-grained sedimentation across the basin. The data presented here provides added context for the evolution of the basin and provides insight into the protracted geodynamics of forearc basins undergoing oblique subduction.

Deep-water deposits are important archives of Earth's history including the occurrence of powerful flow events and the transfer of large volumes of terrestrial detritus into the world's oceans. However the interpretation of depositional processes and palaeoflow conditions from the deep-water sedimentary record has been limited due to a lack of direct observations from modern depositional systems. Recent seafloor studies have resulted in novel findings, including the presence of upslope-migrating bedforms such as cyclic steps formed by supercritical turbidity currents that produce distinct depositional signatures. This study builds on process to product relationships for cyclic steps using modern and ancient datasets by providing sedimentological and quantitative, three-dimensional architectural analyses of their deposits, which are required for recognition and palaeoflow interpretations of sedimentary structures in the rock record. Repeat-bathymetric surveys from two modern environments (Squamish prodelta, Canada, and Monterey Canyon, USA) were used to examine the stratigraphic evolution connected with relatively smallscale (average 40 to 55 m wavelengths and 1.5 to 3.0 m wave heights) upslopemigrating bedforms interpreted to be cyclic steps within submarine channels and lobes. These results are integrated to interpret a succession of Late Cretaceous Nanaimo Group deep-water slope deposits exposed on Gabriola Island, Canada. Similar deposit dimensions, facies and architecture are observed in all datasets, which span different turbidite-dominated settings (prodelta, upper submarine canyon and deep-water slope) and timescales (days, years or thousands of years). Bedform deposits are typically tens of metres long/wide, <1 m thick and make up successions of low-angle, backstepping troughshaped lenses composed of massive sands/sandstones. These results support process-based relationships for these deposits, associated with similar cyclic step bedforms formed by turbidity currents with dense basal layers under lowaggradation conditions. Modern to ancient comparisons reveal the 1465