Features Found On The Ocean Floor

Mid ocean ridge underwater on the sea floor that are made up of magma and run all around the ocean.

Features found on the ocean floor.

The magnetism of mid ocean ridges helped scientists first identify the process of seafloor spreading in the early 20th century. Submarine sediments are of two main types. The slope leads down to the ocean abyss and its plains plateaus mountains ridges and trenches hidden from view except for the tops of certain features that rise above the water s surface as. This community lives in or near marine sedimentary environments from tidal pools along the foreshore out to the continental shelf and then down to the abyssal depths the benthic zone is the ecological region on in and immediately above the seabed including the sediment surface.

This study is extensive and it has been established that the ocean floor has similar features of mountains and valleys as on the earth. Ocean floor topography involves the study of ocean bottom features including the outer continental shelf continental slopes and ocean waves desktops. In fact the tallest mountains and deepest canyons are found on the ocean floor. This graphic shows several ocean floor features on a scale from 0 35 000 feet below sea level.

The seafloor is surprisingly young because of the. On the sea floor made up of rocks minerals sediments and sand a steep cliff like slope increases water pressure and is where the continent connects with the ocean floor. Basalt the once molten rock that makes up most new oceanic crust is a fairly magnetic substance and scientists began using magnetometers to measure the magnetism of the ocean floor in the 1950s what they discovered was that the magnetism of the ocean floor around. Benthos is the community of organisms which live on in or near the seabed the area known as the benthic zone.

Anon145570 january 24 2011. Oceanic crust is about 6 km 4 miles thick. Those consisting of material washed from the land into the sea and those comprising the skeletal remains of. Oceanic crust the outermost layer of earth s lithosphere that is found under the oceans and formed at spreading centres on oceanic ridges which occur at divergent plate boundaries.

The following features are shown at example depths to scale though each feature has a considerable range at which it may occur. Jude amphibious54 july 30 2010 anon31742 if you are asking about a cross section of the ocean floor the top layers are the youngest. The features of the ocean floor are covered by a layer of sediments the thickness of which depends on the age of the feature the local topography and on the abundance of the sediment sup ply. The same tectonic forces that create geographical features like volcanoes and mountains on land create similar features at the bottom of the oceans.

The under water topography maps have been developed by the study of ocean floor topography. It is composed of several layers not including the overlying sediment.