Seafloor character and sedimentary processes in eastern Long Island Sound and western Block Island Sound

Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2006. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Springer for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Geo-Marine Letters 26 (2006): 59-68, doi: 10.1007/s00367-006-0016-4.Multibeam bathymetric data and seismic-reflection profiles collected in eastern Long Island and western Block Island Sounds reveal previously unrecognized glacial features and modern bedforms. Glacial features include an ice-sculptured bedrock surface, a newly identified recessional moraine, exposed glaciolacustrine sediments, and remnants of stagnant-ice-contact deposits. Modern bedforms include fields of transverse sand waves, barchanoid waves, giant scour depressions, and pockmarks. Bedform asymmetry and scour around obstructions indicate that net sediment transport is westward across the northern par of the study area near Fishers Island and eastward across the southern par near Great Gull Island.This work was supported by the Coastal and Marine Geology Program of the U.S. Geological Survey, the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection, and the Atlantic Hydrographic Branch of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration