A three day AAPG Hedberg conference of oral presentations with additional abstracts accommodated through poster sessions. A two-day field trip will be run after the meeting. The Austral Foreland Basin has magnificent outcrops of Tertiary hyperpycnal deposits exposed along kilometers of marine cliffs located in the northeast coast of Tierra del Fuego. The high quality exposures of hyperpycnal channels, channel-levee transitions and lobes will promote a very constructive discussion and critcism among the attendees.
In recent years, an increasing amount of data supports the fact that fluvial currents can enter the sea with a density which often exceeds that of marine waters. These relatively dense currents originate during floods, where the excess in density is related to the high suspended load carried by the freshwater discharge. The situation in which the density of the incoming flow is greater than the receiving basin is known as hyperpycnal flow. Although poorly documented for ancient strata, hyperpycnal flows seem to be very common phenomena. Hyperpycnal discharges provide a non-conventional mechanism that allows the basinward transfer of huge volumes of sediments.