The Geology Of The Ocean Basins

1950- Oceanographic vessels provided data on features of the ocean basin with lead to the discovery of mid-ocean ridges.

Gentile waves roll in as sea gulls call out together creating a rhythm of steady breathing. During the introduction of his song entitled Blue Ocean Floor, Justin Timberlake painted this serene seashore scene. Leading listeners to a new place, the instrumentals made a background breathing sound that continued throughout the song, resulting in an overall feeling of anticipation. As the subject of anticipation, Justin Timberlake sung of a couple whose love seemed hopeless on the outside due to their surroundings but found a way to love each other forever. Justin Timberlake wrote this song in the second person, and brought a new level of meaning to it by singing solo with only loops to support him. It seemed

To support the theory of continental drift is through topography, surveying the floors of oceans, charts of rock magnetism, and statistics on rock ages (Trefil & Hazen, 2010). At one time scientist believed that the deep ocean floors were flat; accumulating the sediment that progressively wore away from the prehistoric landmasses (Trefil & Hazen, 2010). However, they discovered steep-walled valleys and elevated highlands. This was evidences that just as the continents are transformed and are active, so to is the seafloor (Trefil & Hazen, 2010). The Mid- Atlantic Ridge, positioned in the central part of the Atlantic Ocean, is recorded to be the longest mountain range on this planet. Volcanoes, lava flow, and earthquakes are a source of

The land is uplifted crust blocks that form parallel ranges but surface water doesn’t run to the ocean. Instead, it evaporates over time leaving a salt flat.

The creation of the Ring of Fire is very interesting too, it is the result of plate tectonics. These are huge slabs of Earth’s crust that fit together like the pieces of a puzzle. These plates can collide, stay apart, or move up right next to each other. The convergent plate boundaries are formed by plates colliding into each other. The heavier plates slide under the lighter plates causing a deep trench in the ocean floor, as we talked about earlier. If you went down into the ocean you’d be able to see a bunch of trenches in the ocean floor running parallel to corresponding volcanic arcs like the Ring of Fire. This allows islands and continental mountain ranges to be created. A divergent boundary is formed by

First, everything was a giant land mass, then it started separating into the continents and oceans formed in between. We know this because the same species of fish live in waters that are very far apart from one another. By 10 million years ago the basic shape had been created. All the moving of the earth’s crust caused it to push up mountains, the Appalachians are probably older than the continental split, the rest of the mountains (in U.S.) are newer.

Plate tectonics is the scientific theory that attempts to explain the movements of the Earth's lithosphere that have formed the landscape features we see across the globe today” (Briney). Geology defines “plate” as a large slab of solid rock, and “tectonics” is part of the Greek root word for “to build.” Together the words define how the Earth’s surface is built up of moving plates. The theory of plate tectonics dictates that individual plates, broken down into large and small sections of rock, form Earth’s lithosphere. These fragmented bodies of rock move along each other atop the Earth’s liquid lower mantle to create the plate boundaries that have shaped Earth’s landscape. Plate tectonics originated from meteorologist Alfred Wegener’s theory, developed in the early 20th century. In 1912, he realized that the east coast of South America and the west coast of Africa appeared to piece together like a jigsaw puzzle. He further examined the globe and deduced that all of Earth’s continents could somehow be assembled together and proposed the idea that the continents had once been linked in a single supercontinent called Pangaea. To explain today’s position of the continents, Wegener theorized that they began to drift apart approximately 300 million years ago. This theory

In addition, graben or rift valley also developed when oceanic plates are separating developing a divergent boundary. The tectonic settings are related to the lithospheric extension in the Death Valley region by. To begin, the Basin and Range is an area that is a broad, and embedded within North America that extends through Canada, western United States. Basin and Range roughly cover space between the Cascade Ranges, Rocky Mountains up in the north, and of course Sierra Nevada (Parsons). The Basin and Range terrain is the end result of the increased and thinning of the lithosphere, which is constructed by crust and the upper mantle.

Plate tectonics move land masses around, and occasionally, interactions between different plates causes new land to form, and can even join two separate continents together, changing ocean currents and causing climate change. This is evident in the collision of the North and South American continents, which created the Isthmus of Panama, and separated the Pacific and Atlantic Ocean. Approximately 15 million years ago, the North and South American continent was cut off from each other by a seaway about 200 km wide. Over time, the South American plate collided with the Caribbean and Cocos plate, and gradually closed the exchange of the Caribbean and Pacific waters 3-4 million years ago. This resulted in several consequences.

The breaking apart of this supercontinent was due to the movement of the Earth's Tectonic Plates. Tectonic Plates are large masses of the lithosphere or outer layer of the Earth's surface. The layers included in the Lithosphere are the Crust up to the upper layer of the Mantle. The Oceanic Crust is thinner and denser than the Continental Crust and can be found underneath the ocean. It is also more active than the Continental Crust that stretches 200 km below the Earth's surface. This crust drifts and moves either horizontally or vertically causing geological phenomenons such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, etc. The major tectonic plates are North American, Caribbean, South American, Scotia, Antarctic, Eurasian, Arabian, African, Indian, Philippine, Australian, Pacific, Juan de Fuca, Cocos, and Nazca. These plates move an estimate of 1 to 10 cm per year causing interaction at plate boundaries. When two plates are colliding or moving toward each other it is in Convergent boundaries. If these two plates are Oceanic Crusts, they are in Subduction zones wherein the denser plate in forced beneath the less dense plate and would eventually melt or destroy. On the other hand, when two plates move away from each other it is in Divergent boundaries. New crust material from molten magma formed below may fill the space between these plates or become ocean basins.

7. What is the relationship between plate tectonics and the ocean floor—seafloor spreading, for example?

The crust and top of the mantle make up the land but they aren't just one big piece they are made up of many pieces called tectonic plates, which look like puzzle pieces. The plate boundaries are made up of lots of fault lines, and most of the earthquakes around the world happen on these fault lines, Because the edges of the plates are rough, they get stuck but the rest of the plate keeps moving. Finally, when the plate has moved far enough, the edges unstick on one of the faults and there is an earthquake. Some earthquakes happen out at the bottom of the sea which most of the time causes a tsunami because the earthquake opens the sea floor which then makes the water fill in the gap but when the gap closes again it pushes the water out which causes a tsunami.

Separate tectonic plates hold the crust that makes up the continents and the ocean floor

There is an adventurer named Chris Red. Chris red is a very curious adventurer. He wants to know what is in the layers of earth. So one day, he went through the oceanic crust to see.

1. One of the paramount topics we have covered in this course is oceanography (no surprises there). Rather than thinking of oceanography as “just” the study of the ocean, I have always viewed oceanography as the study of marine biology, marine chemistry, marine geology and marine physics. Before diving into any sort of detail, one can see (from the above) that oceanography incorporates four fundamental sciences into one topic; therefore, when asked to list three ways in which marine geology and marine chemistry interrelate, the possibilities are endless. Because we are to list just three examples, I am going to focus my answer on the Earth’s composition/layers. The first way these two fields interrelate is though convection currents (mantle). Density and temperature are two topics central to chemistry. Because density and temperature, along with depth, play a critical role in plate movement (geology), the plate tectonic theory is one example. The second way is through radioactive decay. Specifically, we use radioactive dating (e.g., isotope dating and half-lives) to determine the exact age of a specific geological structures. The third way these two fields interrelate is in determining the composition of the Earth’s inner core. I saved this example for last because it shows how marine physics can also be interrelated in marine chemistry and marine geology. We [scientific community] have a sound understanding of the Earth’s composition because of mass, density and temperature