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Marine sediment, or ocean sediment, or seafloor sediment, are deposits of insoluble particles that have accumulated on the seafloor.These particles either have their origins in soil and rocks and have been transported from the land to the sea, mainly by rivers but also by dust carried by wind and by the flow of glaciers into the sea, or they are biogenic deposits from marine organisms or from ...
The seabed (also known as the seafloor, sea floor, ocean floor, and ocean bottom) is the bottom of the ocean. All floors of the ocean are known as 'seabeds'. The structure of the seabed of the global ocean is governed by plate tectonics. Most of the ocean is very deep, where the seabed is known as the abyssal plain. Seafloor spreading creates ...
Nevertheless, and since ocean basins are interconnected, many oceanographers prefer to refer to one single ocean basin instead of multiple ones. Older references (e.g., Littlehales 1930) [4] consider the oceanic basins to be the complement to the continents, with erosion dominating the latter, and the sediments so derived ending up in the ocean ...
Sedimentary basins are region-scale depressions of the Earth's crust where subsidence has occurred and a thick sequence of sediments have accumulated to form a large three-dimensional body of sedimentary rock. [1] [2] [3] They form when long-term subsidence creates a regional depression that provides accommodation space for accumulation of ...
At the deepest point, the trench is nearly 11,000 m deep (almost 36,000 feet). [38] [3] This is further below sea level than Mount Everest is above sea level, by over 2 kilometers. Volcanic arcs and oceanic trenches partly encircling the Pacific Basin form the so-called Pacific Ring of fire, a zone of frequent earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.
The total sediment deposition rate in remote areas is estimated at two to three centimeters per thousand years. [31] [32] Sediment-covered abyssal plains are less common in the Pacific Ocean than in other major ocean basins because sediments from turbidity currents are trapped in oceanic trenches that border the Pacific Ocean. [33]
Often found on passive margins are several kilometres of sediment, consisting of terrigenous and carbonate deposits. These sediment reservoirs are often useful in the study of paleoceanography and the original formation of ocean basins. [3] These deposits are often not well preserved on active margin shelves due to tectonic activity. [4]
The first discovered mid-ocean ridge was the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, which is a spreading center that bisects the North and South Atlantic basins; hence the origin of the name 'mid-ocean ridge'. Most oceanic spreading centers are not in the middle of their hosting ocean basis but regardless, are traditionally called mid-ocean ridges.