GAY , Aurélien

For over 50 years, sedimentary basins have been considered as the lithosphere's surface film, belonging to the subsurface domain and containing the vast majority of accessible mineral and energy resources. Beyond their human use, sedimentary basins are more importantly the ultimate exchange interface between the earth's main reservoirs....

The equatorial Atlantic margin to the north of the Amazon is strongly affected by gravi- tational processes presenting all forms of rupture of submarine slopes, representing a major geological hazard. The potential causal factors of these underwater landslides were studied from the integration of marine geophysical data (sediment sounder) and...

The initial sediment lithification reactions start with complex interactions involving all components of the sedimentary material (minerals, surface water, decomposing organic matter and living organisms). This is the eogenesis domain (0 to 2000 m below seafloor), covering a burial interval ranging from the interface with the biosphere down to...

The Amazon River extends from the Andes to the Atlantic continental margin and has the world's highest flux of suspended sediment and terrestrial organic carbon to the ocean, leading to the formation of one of the world's largest deep-sea turbiditic fans, 10 km thick, down to water depths of 4500 m. The fan is undergoing gravitational collapse,...

The Brazilian continental margin contains natural gas hydrate (NGH) provinces known from bottom simulating reflections (BSRs). In the Amazon deep-sea fan, a BSR is recognised on the upper slope (700-2250 m depths), within a thrust-fold belt linked to gravitational collapse of the up to 10 km thick depocenter above detachment surfaces. Recurrent...

The submarine fans of large rivers are important sites of long-term carbon storage, but are also settings in which the rapid deposition of organic-rich sediment drives linked processes of gas and gas hydrate formation, fluid expulsion, mass failure and gravity tectonism. The Ama- zon River culminates in one of the world's largest deep-sea fans,...

Oceanic crust formed at slow-spreading ridges is currently subducted in only a few places on Earth and the tectonic and seismogenic imprint of the slow-spreading process is poorly understood. Here we present seismic and bathymetric data from the Northeastern Lesser Antilles Subduction Zone where thick sediments enable seismic imaging to greater...

The giant Jurassic-aged pockmark field of Beauvoisin developed in a 800 m wide depression for over 3.4 Ma during the Oxfordian; it formed below about 600 m water depth. It is composed of sub-sites organized in clusters and forming vertically stacked carbonate lenses encased in marls . This fine-scale study is focused on a detailed analysis of...

International audience

Extended abstract : Caribbean science and Innovation Meeting 2019

The Grenada Basin separates the active Lesser Antilles Arc from the Aves Ridge, described as a Cretaceous‐Paleocene remnant of the 'Great Arc of the Caribbean'. Although various tectonic models have been proposed for the opening of the Grenada Basin, the data on which they rely are insufficient to reach definitive conclusions. This paper...