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Publications (103)
Arc-continent collision in Southeast Asia during the Neogene may have driven global cooling through chemical weathering of freshly exposed ophiolites resulting in atmospheric CO2 removal. Yet, little is known about the cause-and-effect relationships between erosion and the long-term evolution of tectonics and climate in this region. Here, we presen...
Norfolk Ridge bounds the northeastern edge of the continent of Zealandia and is proximal to where Cenozoic Tonga‐Kermadec subduction initiation occurred. We present and analyze new seismic reflection, bathymetric and rock data from Norfolk Ridge that show it is composed of a thick sedimentary succession and that it was formed and acquired its prese...
The 2015 VESPA voyage (Volcanic Evolution of South Pacific Arcs) was a seismic and rock dredging expedition to the Loyalty and Three Kings Ridges and South Fiji Basin. In this paper we present 33 ⁴⁰Ar/³⁹Ar, 22 micropaleontological, and two U/Pb ages for igneous and sedimentary rocks from 33 dredge sites in this little‐studied part of the southwest...
The SW Pacific region contains several ridges and basins that are inferred to represent pre-Quaternary volcanic arcs and back-arc basins. The geology of these features is less well characterized than that of the active Tonga-Kermadec and Vanuatu arcs. We report new major and trace element, and Pb, Hf, Sr and Nd isotope data for 27 lavas dredged fro...
The mostly submarine Hunter Ridge, located in the SW Pacific records a ∼12 Myr to present history of magmatism related to the opening of the North Fiji Basin and subduction of oceanic lithosphere of the South Fiji Basin. Although the Hunter Ridge is probably composed primarily of an older Vitiaz-related basement, young volcanic features are present...
Located in the South-West Pacific, at the northern extremity of the mostly submerged Zealandia continent, the New Caledonian Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) covers 1,470,000 km² and includes basins, ridges and seamounts where abundant ferromanganese crusts have been observed. Several investigations have been conducted since the 1970s on the nature an...
The Demerara and Guinea plateaus are conjugate Transform Marginal Plateaus (TMPs) formed at the junction of the Jurassic Central Atlantic Ocean and the Cretaceous Equatorial Atlantic Ocean. We compare their structure and evolution through a combined industrial/academic seismic dataset tied by well data. We show that these TMPs record a complete evo...
East of the Lesser Antilles active margin, the area of the Barracuda and Tiburon ridges is resulting from of a multidirectional and polyphase tectonic history at the diffuse plate boundary between the North and South American plates. These WNW ESE trending ridges control the sediment distribution and they are bounded by sedimentary trenches, both r...
Neogene and Quaternary shallow-water carbonate records surrounding New Caledonia main island, Grande Terre, provide a good example for understanding the stratigraphic architecture of tropical mixed carbonate-siliciclastic systems. Due to a southeastern tilt of the eastern margin, the eastern shelf of Grande Terre has been better preserved from eros...
The Lansdowne Bank is a partly drowned, isolated carbonate platform of around 4000 km² located 300 km west of New Caledonia, in the SW Pacific Ocean, in water depths of 20 to 100 m. New multibeam bathymetric data, high resolution seismic reflection profiles and sediment gravity cores have been acquired on the bank top and adjacent slopes. This data...
In New Caledonia, upper Cretaceous to Palaeogene sedimentary rocks record a regional tectonic shift from Cretaceous extension to Eocene compression, which led to the obduction of oceanic mantle onto the northeastern tip of the submerged Zealandia continent. This study provides new descriptions of these successions in the region of the Gouaro anticl...
New age and geochemical data are used to investigate the origin of a ∼670 km-long line of eight seamount volcanoes along the western side of the Norfolk Ridge between New Caledonia and New Zealand. Altered lavas and limestones were dredged from three volcanoes during the 2015 Volcanic Evolution of South Pacific Arcs cruise of N/O l’Atalante, so a t...
Past shallow-water carbonate environments of the main island of New Caledonia (NC) have been subject to high terrigenous influx derived from the erosion of ultramafic obducted nappes and are therefore a relevant case study for characterizing neritic carbonate production in mixed carbonate-siliciclastic systems under a tropical climate. More particu...
Convergence and subduction started in the Late Paleocene, to the east of New Caledonia in the South Loyalty Basin/Loyalty Basin, leading to the formation of the Subduction–Obduction Complex of Grande Terre. Convergence during the Eocene consumed the oceanic South Loyalty Basin and the northeasternmost margin of Zealandia (the Norfolk Ridge). The at...
The post-obduction formations of Grande Terre, New Caledonia, comprise igneous intrusions, regolith cover, and marine and terrestrial sedimentary rocks. Two restricted Late Oligocene granitoid bodies are intruded into the Peridotite Nappe and its substrate in the south of the island. Thick regolith cover developed over the Peridotite Nappe from the...
The SW Pacific region consists of a succession of ridges and basins that were created by the fragmentation of Gondwana and the evolution of subduction zones since Mesozoic times. This complex geodynamic evolution shaped the geology of New Caledonia, which lies in the northern part of the Zealandia continent. Alternative tectonic models have been po...
The Loyalty Ridge lies to the east and NE of the Norfolk Ridge. The three main Loyalty Islands (Maré, Lifou and Ouvéa) emerge from the ridge at the same latitude as Grande Terre. The islands are uniformly composed of carbonate deposits, except for Maré, where Middle Miocene intra-plate basalts and associated volcaniclastic rocks form restricted out...
The mineral resources of the non-ultramafic rocks of New Caledonia and its Exclusive Economic Zone can be classified according to their host rocks. The metallic mineral resources are essentially associated with volcanic and magmatic activity. Non-economic volcanogenic massive sulfide deposits with Cu and Au are located in the Late Carboniferous Koh...
The Lansdowne Bank is a partly drowned, isolated rimmed carbonate platform of around 4000 km2 lying in between 30-100 m water depth and located offshore New Caledonia in the SW Pacific. New multibeam data, single-channel seismic profiles, along with dredged rock samples and sediment gravity cores have been acquired on the bank top and adjacent slop...
Convergence and subduction started in the Late Palaeocene, to the east of New Caledonia, in the South Loyalty Basin/Loyalty Basin (SLB/LB), leading to the formation of the Subduction-Obduction Complex of Grande Terre. Convergence during the Eocene consumed the oceanic South Loyalty Basin, and the north easternmost margin of Zealandia (the Norfolk R...
The Fairway Basin is an intracratonic deep-water basin inherited from cretaceous rifting, perched between the Lord Howe Rise and the New Caledonia Basin in the Southwest Pacific. Its originality lies in its atypical present-day physiography and its carbonate-dominated sedimentary setting since the Miocene. Although very limited well controls are av...
The development of ideas leading to a greater understanding of subduction initiation is limited by the scarcity of present-day examples. Furthermore, the few examples identified so far unfortunately provide few insights into the nature of magmatism at the inception of subduction. Here we report new observations from the Matthew and Hunter (M&H) sub...
The Loyalty Ridge lies to the east and the northeast of the Norfolk Ridge. The three main Loyalty Islands, Maré, Lifou and Ouvéa, emerge from the ridge at the same latitude as Grande Terre. The islands are uniformly composed of carbonate deposits, except for Maré where Middle Miocene intraplate basalts and associated volcaniclastic rocks form restr...
Mineral resources of non-ultramafic rocks of New Caledonia and its Exclusive Economic Zone are controlled by its specific geology. Metallic mineral resources are essentially associated with volcanic and magmatic activity. Non-economic Volcanogenic Massive Sulphides with Cu and Au are located in the Late Carboniferous Koh Ophiolite and in the Late C...
One of the largest ophiolitic peridotite masses in the world covers a quarter of the island of Grande Terre, New Caledonia. The Peridotite Nappe was obducted during the Eocene, is weakly deformed and corresponds to the highest of a structurally simple pile of thrust nappes. We present new marine seismic data that allows us to track the offshore con...
The Peridotite Nappe of New Caledonia has been considered for long as a single sheet of
mantle, lately dismembered and separated by erosion (Nicolas, 1989, Paris, 1981). The tectonic relationship between the ultramafic terrane and its substrate appears to be more complex and diversethan previously thought. The geometry and structure of the differen...
The New Caledonia Trough (NCT) is a 2000-3000 m deep bathymetric feature that extends 2500 km from Taranaki, New Zealand, to the western margin of New Caledonia (Northern Zealandia, SW Pacific). The underlying sedimentary basin originates from Cretaceous extension, but underwent a significant Eocene tectonic event that shaped its present physiograp...
Obductions are unusual tectonic events observed only in a few places over the world. The associated sedimentary records are generally poorly preserved and/or strongly tectonized. However, in New Caledonia, outcropping Upper Cretaceous-Paleogene sedimentary successions and particularly Eocene “flysch-like” turbidites have been interpreted to record...
The Marquesas Island chain in Polynesia is quite unusual because the alignment of the islands on the Pacific oceanic plate (N40°W) does not follow the plate motion in the region (N65°W). The exact location of the active hotspot is unknown but has been predicted to underlie the Marquesas Fracture Zone Ridge. Nevertheless, no concrete evidence exists...
Classically, deepwater fold-and-thrust belts are classified in two main types, depending if they result from near- or far-field stresses and the understanding of their driving and triggering mechanism is poorly known. We present a geophysical data set off the western margin of New Caledonia (SW Pacific) that reveals deformed structures of a deepwat...
The Peridotite Nappe of New Caledonia is one of the largest ultramafic ophiolite in the World: it represents about one quarter of the 500 x 80 km island of Grande Terre. This extensive upper mantle unit was tectonically emplaced during the Eocene onto the northeastern edge of Zealandia continent. It is weakly deformed because it was not involved in...
In New-Caledonia, during Eocene, a major change from extensional to compressive regime led to the obduction of oceanic mantle onto both autochtonous and allochtonous sedimentary cover unit. In the western coast, this is recorded by a ca. 4 km-thick turbidite succession referred to as the “Bourail flysch”. The current study focuses on a detailed sed...
We present a global inventory of transform continental margins, based on both a worldwide comparison of continent-ocean boundary identifications with oceanic fracture zones traces, and a compilation of published regional studies. This inventory increases the number of identified transform margins from 29 to 78. These margins represent 16% of contin...
The IGUANES cruise took place in May 2013 on the R/V L’Atalante along the Demerara
passive transform margin off French Guiana and Surinam. Seismic, multibeam and chirp
acquisitions were made. Piston cores were collected for pore geochemistry and sedimentology.
A mooring was deployed on the sea-bottom for 10 months (temperature, salinity, turbidity...
7th International Symposium on Submarine Mass Movements and their Consequences
New geophysical data acquired during three expeditions of the R/V Southern Surveyor in the southern part of the North Fiji Basin allow us to characterize the deformation of the upper plate at the southern termination of the New Hebrides subduction zone, where it bends eastward along the Hunter Ridge. Unlike the northern end of the Tonga subduction...
The Demerara plateau, located offshore French Guiana and Suriname, is part of a passive transform continental margin particularly prone to develop slope instabilities, probably in relation to the presence a free distal border along its steep continental slope. Slope failure occurred at different periods (Cretaceous to Neogene) and shows an overall...
We present the first comprehensive seismic-stratigraphic analysis of Fairway Basin, which is situated on the rifted continent of Zealandia in the Tasman Sea, southwest Pacific, between Australia and New Caledonia. The basin is 700 km long, 150 km wide, and has water depths of 500 to 3000 m. We describe depositional architecture and paleogeographic...
As part of a Public Private consortium, explorations to locate sulfide mineralization in the French EEZ of Wallis and Futuna allowed to discover new hydrothermal fields. Three cruises organized between 2010 and 2012 have explored this area. The first phase focused on a regional mapping to find areas of recent volcanism using multibeam echosounders...
The interactions between the sand-rich Orinoco turbidite system and the compressional structures of the Barbados prism have been active since Eocene time as illustrated by the study of outcrops onshore Barbados Island. Because of strong morphologic and tectonic control, the present-day Orinoco turbiditic pattern system does not exhibit a classic fa...
The Demerara plateau, located offshore French Guiana and Suriname, is part of a passive transform continental margin particularly prone to develop slope instabilities, probably in relation to the presence of a free distal border along its steep continental slope. Slope failure occurred at different periods (Cretaceous to Neogene) and shows an overa...
Two Pleistocene mass transport deposits (MTDs), with volumes of
thousands of km3, have been identified from multi-channel seismic data in the
abyssal plain at the front of the Barbados accretionary prism. Estimated sediment
volumes for these MTDs are likely underestimated due to limited seismic coverage.
In this work, we suggest that these MTDs are...
The Fairway Basin lies between Australia and New Caledonia in the northern Tasman Frontier area with water depths ranging from less than 1,000 m to 2,400 m. This basin formed in mid-to-Late Cretaceous during eastern Gondwana breakup and received detrital and pelagic sediments since that time. It is known for a 70,000 km² bottom simulating reflector...
Cet article propose une synthèse des connaissances explicitant l’originalité et la diversité des formations géologiques sous-marines de la ZEE de Nouvelle-Calédonie. Un rappel est donné sur l’histoire géologique complexe de la région dont découle une géo-diversité sous-marine exceptionnelle. L’article présente également les méthodes et les outils u...
he eastern Demerara Plateau offshore French Guiana was surveyed in 2003 during the GUYAPLAC cruise
(multibeam bathymetry and acoustic imagery, 6-channel seismic reflection and 3.5 kHz echo-sounding).
The data show the “post-transform” Cenozoic that the series located on the outer part of the plateau
(below c. 2000 m) contain at least twelve stacked...
Understanding the genesis of the very peculiar 600 km wide Santos Basin - São Paulo Plateau system and its narrow conjugate Namibe Margin is an old kinematic and structural problem. Several hypotheses have been proposed which imply the same amount of horizontal movement. We propose to investigate the consequences of the horizontal movement based in...
We present the structure and evolution of the eastern part of the Demerara plateau, offshore French Guiana, from the analysis of geophysical data collected during GUYAPLAC cruise. This area is located at the intersection of a transform segment and a divergent segment of a continental margin related to the Early Cretaceous opening of the Equatorial...
The eastern Demerara Rise located offshore French Guiana was surveyed in 2003 (GUYAPLAC cruise, part of the French EXTRAPLAC program) using multibeam bathymetry and imagery, 6-channel seismic data and 3-5 kHz echosounding. Analysis of seismic data shows that the flank of the Demerara Rise endures repetitive sliding of its Paleogene to Neogene sedim...
The Barracuda Ridge and the Tiburon Rise, two major oceanic basement ridges, lie at the western end of the diffuse North America–South America plate-boundary zone, where they enter the subduction zone beneath the Lesser Antilles island arc. There is a large degree of uncertainty in the motion between the North American and South American plates pre...
The Barracuda Ridge and the Tiburon Rise, two major oceanic basement
ridges, lie at the western end of the diffuse North America-South
America plate-boundary zone, where they enter the subduction zone
beneath the Lesser Antilles island arc. Numerous Fracture Zones affect
the oceanic crust in this area such as Fifteen Twenty FZ, Marathon FZ
and Merc...
The location and functioning of the North America - South America plate
boundary zone remain unknown, despite significant past efforts to
decipher its precise position and the associated deformation. The
Barracuda Ridge and the Tiburon Rise, two major oceanic basement ridges,
are situated at the western end of this diffuse plate-boundary zone,
wher...
New seismic and bathymetric data reveal that the plate boundary zone between the North American and South American plates, east of the Caribbean, has occupied a >200-km-wide zone of localized basement uplift and folding, and of faulting of the sedimentary cover, during the early Pleistocene to Holocene. This zone, which includes the Barracuda Ridge...
The Amsterdam-Saint Paul plateau results from a 10 Myr interaction between the South East Indian Ridge and the Amsterdam-Saint Paul hot spot. During this period of time, the structure of the plateau changed as a consequence of changes in both the ridge-hot spot relative distance and in the strength of the hot spot source. The joint analysis of grav...
Although transform margins represent ~30% of rifted margins around the world, few studies have investigated mass-movement
processes in such areas and their links with this specific structural context. The French Guiana transform margin and adjacent
Demerara abyssal plain have been surveyed during the GUYAPLAC cruise, collecting multibeam bathymetri...
Transform margins present a very steep ocean-continent boundary inherited from the vertical transform fault along which opening occurred. This is expressed on bathymetry by important bathymetric gradients (in average greater than 20°) along the continental slope. These margins usually have trapped organic matter during rifting. However, the geometr...
Globally oblique to the opening direction of the Equatorial Atlantic,
the continental margin of French Guyana is divided in a succession of
transform (North of Demerara Plateau and the eastern margin) and
divergent segments (East of Demerara Plateau). Reflection seismic and
bathymetry data acquired in 2003 by the GUYAPLAC cruise, improve our
knowle...
The Kerguelen Plateau lies in the Southern Indian Ocean and is classically considered as a Large Igneous Magmatic Province (LIP) emplaced above an oceanic crust. The interpretation of the gravimetric/bathymetric anomalies shows that the Plateau is structured by NNW- and NW-trending en échelon fractures along its north-eastern border and by WNW-tren...
Structures of oceanic plateaus are complex, but record many aspects of ridge-hotspot interaction. To address this question, the young (still active) Saint-Paul and Amsterdam Plateau, in the southern Indian Ocean, is of particular interest because of its small size (800 km long, and 150 km wide) allowing an almost complete data coverage and because...