Marine geology and seabed stability study for the potential gas-hydrate area off SW Taiwan(I)

To investigate the influence of unstable seafloor geology for future gas hydrateexploitation off SW Taiwan, this project is aimed to investigate gas hydratedissociation relationship with the seabed stability, which can help deep-sea oil andgas field exploration, extraction, development and transportation process. For theinland areas, gravity is the primary factor on a landslide. However, the influence ofgas and fluid migration is of great concern for the marine slope stability evaluation.Therefore, in the first and second years of this project, we plan to conduct a finemeasurement in the Palm Ridge area, located to the western side of Penghu Canyon. Thesimultaneous presence of gas and fluid migration, as well as the coexistence of slopefailure and stable margin in the Palm Ridge, provides an ideal site for our investigation.Coupled with multi-scale geophysical, geochemical and geological surveys, the differentseabed stability relationship with the gas hydrate off SW Taiwan could be betterunderstood. Our research content includes high resolution seismic surveys along severalprofiles and the potential drilling sites, which will help us understand the crustalstructures and seabed features, the study on velocity structures and weak zones insedimentary layer, the sedimentary compositions and geological hazard of the seabed,the sub-bottom fluid activity, the mechanical behaviors of the seabed and the generalbackground and monitoring of the seabed deformation. The results will be used for seabedstability consideration in the future gas hydrate exploration off SW Taiwan. Finally,in the last year of project, we expect to put into practice of the slope stabilityanalysis method established based on our results to the potential exploitation sites