Seminar- “Recent Advances in Turbidity Current Research”

Abstract:

Turbidity currents hold the key to many fundamental questions in the fields of marine geology and sedimentology. Knowledge of turbidity currentsai??i?? cause and destructive nature has direct application in marine hazard mitigation, deep-water resource development, and hydrocarbon energy industry. Tremendous strides have been made through many researchersai??i?? pioneering work in turbidity current theories, laboratory experiments, as well as numerical simulations. But because of its unpredictability and destructive nature, being able to continuously monitor field turbidity currents in-situ has yet been accomplished. This presentation first briefly reviews the history of turbidity currents research in the past century; highlights the milestone theoretical and technological advances; and discusses the major challenges in turbidity current research. Specifically, an initiative to conduct a full-scale field campaign to investigate large, destructive turbidity currents in Northeastern South China Sea is proposed.