Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
The Atlantic Ocean and the Arctic Ocean are good examples of active, growing oceanic basins, whereas the Mediterranean Sea is shrinking. The Pacific Ocean is also an active, shrinking oceanic basin, even though it has both spreading ridge and oceanic trenches. Perhaps the best example of an inactive oceanic basin is the Gulf of Mexico, which ...
Mid-ocean ridge cross-section (cut-away view) A mid-ocean ridge (MOR) is a seafloor mountain system formed by plate tectonics.It typically has a depth of about 2,600 meters (8,500 ft) and rises about 2,000 meters (6,600 ft) above the deepest portion of an ocean basin.
The ocean is the body of salt water that covers approximately 70.8% of Earth. [8] In English, the term ocean also refers to any of the large bodies of water into which the world ocean is conventionally divided. [9] The following names describe five different areas of the ocean: Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, Antarctic/Southern, and Arctic.
Major continental divides, showing drainage into the major oceans and seas of the world. Grey areas are endorheic basins that do not drain to the ocean.. A continental divide is a drainage divide on a continent such that the drainage basin on one side of the divide feeds into one ocean or sea, and the basin on the other side either feeds into a different ocean or sea, or else is endorheic, not ...
The Atlantic Seaboard basin in eastern North America drains to the Atlantic Ocean; the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence basin in central and eastern North America drains to the Gulf of St. Lawrence on the Atlantic Ocean or to the Labrador Sea; the Gulf of Mexico basin in the southern United States drains to the Gulf of Mexico, a basin of the Atlantic ...
The ocean's surface is hit hard by anthropogenic change, and the surface ecosystem is likely already dramatically different from even a few hundred years ago. For example, prior to widespread damming, logging, and industrialisation, more wood may have entered the open ocean, [14] while plastic had not yet been invented. And because floating ...
An abyssal plain is an underwater plain on the deep ocean floor, usually found at depths between 3,000 and 6,000 metres (9,800 and 19,700 ft).Lying generally between the foot of a continental rise and a mid-ocean ridge, abyssal plains cover more than 50% of the Earth's surface.
A classic example is the Coast Range ophiolite of California, which is one of the most extensive ophiolite terranes in North America. This oceanic crust likely formed during the middle Jurassic Period, roughly 170 million years ago, in an extensional regime within either a back-arc or a forearc basin. It was later accreted to the continental ...