Home▸Geology & Earth Science▸Turbidite Deposition and the Bouma Sequence

🌊 Turbidite Deposition and the Bouma Sequence

Explore how underwater avalanches of sediment called turbidity currents race down submarine slopes and drop their load in a predictable five-part vertical sequence, a fingerprint that geologists use to identify ancient deep-sea deposits and locate oil reservoirs.

Geology & Earth Science3DModerate60 FPS💧 Water 🌍 Earth

The simulator models a turbidity current triggered on a submarine slope, letting learners watch sediment-laden water accelerate downslope, decelerate as it reaches the flat basin floor, and deposit its sediment load in real time as the five graded Bouma divisions build up in vertical order, mirroring the actual physics of settling velocity and flow deceleration.

🔬 What It Demonstrates

🎮 How to Use

Choose a trigger mechanism such as an earthquake, storm wave loading, or slope oversteepening, then set the initial sediment concentration and grain size mix carried by the flow. Start the simulation to watch the turbidity current move downslope and decelerate, then observe the vertical stack of Ta through Te divisions form in the deposit panel as the flow loses energy, and compare the resulting bed profile against a normal, slowly accumulated background mud layer shown alongside it.

💡 Did You Know?

In 1929 a magnitude 7.2 earthquake off the Grand Banks of Newfoundland triggered a turbidity current so powerful that it snapped a series of transatlantic telegraph cables one after another as it swept across the seafloor, and because each cable break was independently time-stamped, scientists were later able to calculate that the current reached speeds of roughly sixty-eight kilometers per hour, among the first direct evidence that such currents were real and not just a theoretical idea.

⚙ Under the hood

geologysedimentologyoceanographyearth-sciencepetroleum-geologystratigraphydeep-sea

3D · Three.js / WebGL renderer · 60 FPS target · runs fully client-side, no install