Late Quaternary slope instability on the Faeroe margin: mass flow featuresand timing of events

Deep-tow side-scan sonar, sub-bottom profiling and sediment core data revea l that, since the last interglacial, mass flows repeatedly occurred both on the northeastern Faeroe margin and on the Faeroes slope of the Faeroe-Shet land Channel. In both areas. the last two slope instability episodes are da ted at the Pleistocene: Holocene boundary and at the Last Glacial Maximum ( LGM), i.e. during times of fast sea-level rise and increasing bottom curren t activity, and glacio-eustatic lowstand, respectively. A major fine-graine d turbidite found in the Norwegian Sea basin off the Faeroe margin may be c orrelated with the LGM event. Several distinctive mass flow features have b een documented. These include, among others, large swarms of debris flow 'g lide' tracks with outrunner blocks found on the seabed of the northeastern Faeroe margin. It was concluded that the age of the latter features is not older than the LGM.