Modeling gas, hydrates, and slope stability on the U.S. Atlantic margin during Pleistocene glacial cycles

Abstract

Changes in temperature and sea level can cause dissociation of methane hydrates in shallow marine sediments, leading to seafloor destabilization. Along the U.S. Atlantic margin, there exists a well-documented history of slope failure and numerous recorded occurrences of gas seeps. Several studies have linked slope failure in the region to gas seepage and hydrate dissociation driven by glacial-interglacial transitions, but this linkage has not been quantitatively demonstrated. Along the shelf edge, in an area where shallow methane gas seeps have been identified, we modeled methane gas and hydrate formation using ensembles of one-dimensional fluid flow simulations. Methane gas formation was modeled over the last 120,000 years to simulate a glacial-interglacial cycle. We ran this model at 16,044 individual locations in the region between ${29}^{\circ }$ N – ${45}^{\circ }$ N and ${82}^{\circ }$ W – ${66}^{\circ }$ W at a resolution of 1 × 1 arcminutes, focusing specifically on water depths between 200 and 1000 m that bracket the seafloor outcrop of the base of the hydrate stability zone. Using historic temperature and pressure records from the last 120,000 years, sediment properties in the area, and factor of safety calculations, we found that hydrate dissociation alone is unlikely to cause slope failure in the region, implying that an additional driving force would be necessary for failure to occur.