ALBERT

Description: The lower continental slope of Morocco's west coast consists of Triassic-age salt manifested in the form of diapirs, tongues, sheets, canopies, and toe thrusts. Active salt diapirism and regional tectonics greatly influence the morphology of the modern sea floor, forming a severely rugose expression with ongoing minibasin development and episodic submarine failure. Detailed mapping of a 1064-km2 (411-mi2) seismic survey acquired in the Safi Haute Mer area revealed that Jurassic to Holocene salt mobilization continually affected distribution of sediment, causing a range of depositional flow styles, from slumps to sheet slides and mass-transport complexes (MTCs). Large sediment waves (20 km [12 mi] long, 1.5-km [0.9-mi] wavelength) were also documented at the end of the Aptian. An east-west–trending structural anticline downdip of the salt activated during initiation of the Atlas uplift in the latest Cretaceous to earliest Tertiary and shaped much of the lower slope into the Tertiary with a persistent canyon system and slope channels. The largest of the debris flows is a Cretaceous-age MTC, a 500-m (1640-ft)-thick flow that spans an area of up to 20,000 km2 (7722 mi2). Composing the MTC are (1) chaotic, mounded seismic facies; (2) internal syndepositional thrusts; and (3) transported megablocks (3.3 km2 [1.3 mi2]) with preserved internal stratigraphy. The MTC originated from an upslope collapse of a narrow shelf during the earliest phases of the Alpine orogeny. Dallas B. Dunlap received his B.S. degree in geology from the University of Texas at Austin in 1996. That year he joined the Bureau of Economic Geology's (BEG) international projects group as a research scientist associate focused on reservoir characterization studies in Austria, Mexico, and Venezuela. In 2006, he moved to the BEG's Quantitative Clastics Laboratory studying various marine depositional systems. Lesli J. Wood is a senior research scientist and lecturer at the Bureau of Economic Geology, and the director of the Quantitative Clastics Laboratory Industrial Associates program. Her interests include seismic geomorphology, clastic depositional systems, and Martian sedimentology. She holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in geology from Arkansas Tech University and the University of Arkansas, respectively, and a Ph.D. in earth resources from Colorado State University. Chad Weisenburger is currently employed by EOG Resources in Tyler, Texas, as a geologist on the Haynesville Shale Team. He received his B.S. degree in geology from North Dakota State University in 2005. In 2007, he earned an M.S. degree in geology from the University of Texas, where he worked on salt tectonics, sedimentology, and stratigraphy of offshore Morocco. Haddou Jabour graduated from the Rabat School of Mines in 1980 with first class honors and worked at National Office of Hydrocarbons and Mining (ONHYM) until 1983. After receiving his M.S. degree in geology from the University of South Carolina in 1985, he rejoined ONHYM and is now a senior explorationist in charge of basin evaluation and promotion. His interests include petroleum system assessment and prospect evaluation.