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A baseline, as defined by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, is the line (or curve) along the coast from which the seaward limits of a state's territorial sea and certain other maritime zones of jurisdiction are measured, such as a state's exclusive economic zone. Normally, a sea baseline follows the low-water line of a ...
The seabed (also known as the seafloor, sea floor, ocean floor, and ocean bottom) is the bottom of the ocean. All floors of the ocean are known as 'seabeds'. The structure of the seabed of the global ocean is governed by plate tectonics. Most of the ocean is very deep, where the seabed is known as the abyssal plain. Seafloor spreading creates ...
From shallow waters to the deep sea, the open ocean to rivers and lakes, numerous terrestrial and marine species depend on the surface ecosystem and the organisms found there. [1] The ocean's surface acts like a skin between the atmosphere above and the water below, and hosts an ecosystem unique to this environment.
The continental shelf is the relatively shallow water area found in proximity to continents; it is the portion of the continental margin that transitions from the shore out towards to ocean. Continental shelves are believed to make up 7% of the sea floor. [3] The width of continental shelves worldwide varies in the range of 0.03–1500 km. [4]
The oceanic zone is typically defined as the area of the ocean lying beyond the continental shelf (e.g. the neritic zone), but operationally is often referred to as beginning where the water depths drop to below 200 metres (660 ft), seaward from the coast into the open ocean with its pelagic zone.
Spreading rate is the rate at which an ocean basin widens due to seafloor spreading. (The rate at which new oceanic lithosphere is added to each tectonic plate on either side of a mid-ocean ridge is the spreading half-rate and is equal to half of the spreading rate). Spreading rates determine if the ridge is fast, intermediate, or slow.
GEBCO is the only intergovernmental body with a mandate to map the whole ocean floor. At the beginning of the project, only 6 per cent of the world's ocean bottom had been surveyed to today's standards; as of June 2022, the project had recorded 23.4 per cent mapped. About 14,500,000 square kilometres (5,600,000 sq mi) of new bathymetric data ...
A marine coastal ecosystem is a marine ecosystem which occurs where the land meets the ocean. Worldwide there is about 620,000 kilometres (390,000 mi) of coastline. Coastal habitats extend to the margins of the continental shelves, occupying about 7 percent of the ocean surface area.