Profile Of Sea Floor

The lack of weathering and erosion in most areas however allows geological processes to be seen more clearly on.

Profile of sea floor. The sea floor then drops off steeply along the continental slope the true edge of the continent. Exploration of the seafloor and the earth s crust. In which hills are seen as rises and valleys as depressions. Running through all the world s oceans is a continuous mountain range called the mid ocean ridge submarine ridge in figure 14 23.

The world s sea floor is littered with an estimated 14 million tonnes of microplastics broken down from the masses of rubbish entering the oceans every year according to australia s. The ocean plates spread and grow in opposite directions so rocks that are equidistance from the center have the same magnetic polarity and age. The results that let this new marvelously detailed map of the seafloor from nasa s earth observatory be made were actually first published last year as part of a paper in science from. The ocean floor has the same general character as the land areas of the world.

The following features are shown at example depths to scale though each feature has a considerable range at which it may occur. The seafloor s permanent magnetic signatures showed that new ocean crust was created at the ridge crests and then spread outward in both directions. The mid atlantic ridge for instance separates the north american plate from the eurasian plate and the south american plate from the african plate the east pacific rise is a mid ocean ridge that runs through the eastern pacific ocean and separates the pacific plate from the north american. Sediment profile imagery spi a technique for photographing the interface between the seabed and the overlying water.

A bathymetric profile provides a skyline view of the sea floor. This seafloor spreading hypothesis had been proposed a few years earlier by harry hess a petrologist at princeton university and robert dietz an oceanographer in the us coast and geodetic. Seafloor spreading occurs along mid ocean ridges large mountain ranges rising from the ocean floor. Seafloor massive sulfide deposits mineral deposits from seafloor hydrothermal vents.

This graphic shows several ocean floor features on a scale from 0 35 000 feet below sea level. As the magma and lava cool at seafloor spreading centers whatever magnetic field is present get ingrained into the rock. Seafloor mapping the measurement and presentation of water depth of a given body of water. Other articles where ocean floor is discussed.

Continental shelf 300 feet continental slope 300 10 000 feet abyssal plain 10 000 feet abyssal hill 3 000 feet up from the abyssal plain seamount 6 000 feet. Every so often it has occurred over 170 times over the past 100 million years the poles will suddenly switch.