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Cross section of an oceanic trench formed along an oceanic-oceanic convergent boundary The Peru–Chile Trench is located just left of the sharp line between the blue deep ocean (on the left) and the light blue continental shelf, along the west coast of South America.
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 hadal zone, also known as the hadopelagic zone, is the deepest region of the ocean, lying within oceanic trenches.The hadal zone ranges from around 6 to 11 km (3.7 to 6.8 mi; 20,000 to 36,000 ft) below sea level, and exists in long, narrow, topographic V-shaped depressions.
Trenches are generally parallel to a volcanic island arc, and about 200 km from a volcanic arc. Oceanic trenches typically extend 3 to 4 km (1.9 to 2.5 mi) below the level of the surrounding oceanic floor. The greatest ocean depth to be sounded is in the Challenger Deep of the Mariana Trench, at a depth of 10,911 m (35,798 ft) below sea level.
[1] [2] Conditions within the deep sea are a combination of low temperatures, darkness, and high pressure. [3] The deep sea is considered the least explored Earth biome as the extreme conditions make the environment difficult to access and explore. [4] Organisms living within the deep sea have a variety of adaptations to survive in these ...
The Clipperton fracture zone is the southernmost of the north east Pacific Ocean lineations. It begins east-northeast of the Line Islands and ends in the Middle America Trench off the coast of Central America, [4] [11] [6] forming a rough line on the same latitude as Kiribati and Clipperton Island, from which it gets its name.
The trench is a result of a convergent plate boundary, where the eastern edge of the oceanic Nazca plate is being subducted beneath the continental South American plate. [1] The trench is also a part of the Chile triple junction , an unusual junction that consists of a mid-oceanic ridge and the Chile Rise being subducted under the South ...
The fracture zone is thus the junction between oceanic crustal regions of different ages. Because younger crust is generally higher due to increased thermal buoyancy, the fracture zone is characterized by an offset in elevation with an intervening canyon that may be topographically distinct for hundreds or thousands of kilometers on the sea floor.