Compaction and earliest pore-water diagenesis in late Pleistocene - Holocene Pelagic and Terrigenous sediments of the Labrador Sea

Two deep-sea cores from the Labrador Sea have been examined using a variety of techniques. Sediments from the eastern levee of the North Atlantic Mid-Ocean Channel consist of spill-over turbidites interstratified with hemipelagic sediments and ice-rafted detritus which are correlatable with levee cores described in earlier studies. The same facies are found on the lower Labrador Slope except that, here, the amount of ice-rafted detritus in the hemipelagic facies is more variable. Compressibility tests have enabled an evaluation of the porosity-permeability character of the levee spill-over facies at deeper levels of burial. Organic- and inorganic carbon contents, shear strength and porosity are unique to each facies. These, and the chemistry of the pore waters have been used to infer the early diagenetic processes occurring at both sites