Geological Features Of Ocean Floor

Like dry land the ocean floor has various features including flat plains sharp mountains and rugged canyons fig.

Geological features of ocean floor.

Some features like canyons and seamounts might look familiar while others such as hydrothermal vents and methane seeps are unique to the deep. Students imagine what it might be like from the edge of a continent down to the deepest part of the ocean. The ocean floor is continually being formed and destroyed. Topographic features the physical features of the surface of earth and geologic processes in the ocean basins hold the keys to plate tectonics a fundamental theory of geology that explains the movement of the continents and seafloor over time.

The ocean floor is called the abyssal plain. Ocean floor geology. While the ocean has an average depth of 2 3 miles the shape and depth of the seafloor is complex. It is used as a reference to define coastal features and calculate the elevation of topographical elements.

Features rising up from the ocean floor include seamounts volcanic islands and the mid oceanic ridges and rises. This graphic shows several ocean floor features on a scale from 0 35 000 feet below sea level. The ocean floor covers more than 70 percent of the planet s surface. Mid ocean ridge group of underwater mountain chains criss crossing the oceans.

Kelp can grow up to two feet per day therefore they can grow on the ocean floor that is a hundred fifty feet deep and even reach the surface of the water. Compare both have plants hills feel. View essay ocean floor pdf from sci 101 at georgia virtual school. Compare and contrast the geological features of the continents and the ocean floor.

Below the ocean floor there are a few small deeper areas called ocean trenches. A plate is a rigid layer of earth s crust and tectonics is the large scale movements of the crust. The abyssal plain has a depth between 2 200 and 5 500 m 7 200 and 18 000 ft and covers about 40 of the ocean floor. The forests can be so dense they can even rival with the lushest forests on the land.

After a short review of the different geological formations found on the ocean floor students construct three dimensional models of the ocean floor s specific geological features. Features of the ocean include the continental shelf slope and rise. These areas are among the flattest and least explored on the earth s surface. Describe the origins of the major topographic features of the sea floor including continental shelves and slopes spreading ridges seamount chains and isolated seamounts and deep submarine canyons describe the various components of oceanic crust.

However the lowest point in the world ocean is much deeper than the highest point on land. That s why there are so called kelp forests in the ocean due to this fact. The ocean floor off the continental shelf is known as the abyssal plain.