Submarine gullies and an axial channel in glacier-influenced Courtauld Fjord, East Greenland

Submarine gullies have been observed widely in swath-bathymetric imagery of the shelf edge and upper slope on high-latitude margins (e.g. Noormets et al. 2009; Gales et al. 2013), but less frequently in glacier-influenced fjord settings. Gullies vary in distribution, morphology and dimensions depending on formation mechanisms; these include submarine mass wasting, subglacially or proglacially derived turbid underflows and dense bottom-water currents linked to brine rejection during sea-ice formation (e.g. Noormets et al. 2009). Since recession of the Greenland Ice Sheet through the Kangerlugssuaq Fjord system, at 68ºN in East Greenland, after the Last Glacial Maximum (Dowdeswell et al. 2010), significant seafloor erosion on the flanks of the inner tributary fjords has taken place to produce a series of submarine gullies and an axial channel (Fig. 1a-e).