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Marine sediment, or ocean sediment, or seafloor sediment, are deposits of insoluble particles that have accumulated on the seafloor.These particles either have their origins in soil and rocks and have been transported from the land to the sea, mainly by rivers but also by dust carried by wind and by the flow of glaciers into the sea, or they are biogenic deposits from marine organisms or from ...
These materials are eroded from continents and transported by wind and water to the ocean. Fluvial sediments are transported from land by rivers and glaciers, such as clay, silt, mud, and glacial flour. Aeolian sediments are transported by wind, such as dust and volcanic ash. [8] Biogenous sediment is the next most abundant material on the ...
Seas, oceans, and lakes accumulate sediment over time. The sediment can consist of terrigenous material, which originates on land, but may be deposited in either terrestrial, marine, or lacustrine (lake) environments, or of sediments (often biological) originating in the body of water.
The tectonic morphology of this trench segment is fully exposed on the ocean bottom. The central Chile segment of the trench is moderately sedimented, with sediments onlapping onto pelagic sediments or ocean basement of the subducting slab, but the trench morphology is still clearly discernible.
Pelagic sediment or pelagite is a fine-grained sediment that accumulates as the result of the settling of particles to the floor of the open ocean, far from land. These particles consist primarily of either the microscopic, calcareous or siliceous shells of phytoplankton or zooplankton; clay-size siliciclastic sediment; or some mixture of these.
Siliceous ooze is a type of biogenic pelagic sediment located on the deep ocean floor. Siliceous oozes are the least common of the deep sea sediments, and make up approximately 15% of the ocean floor. [1] Oozes are defined as sediments which contain at least 30% skeletal remains of pelagic microorganisms. [2]
Nevertheless, and since ocean basins are interconnected, many oceanographers prefer to refer to one single ocean basin instead of multiple ones. Older references (e.g., Littlehales 1930) [4] consider the oceanic basins to be the complement to the continents, with erosion dominating the latter, and the sediments so derived ending up in the ocean ...
Polymetallic nodules are found in both shallow (e.g. the Baltic Sea [7]) and deeper waters (e.g. the central Pacific), even in lakes, [8] and are thought to have been a feature of the seas and oceans at least since the deep oceans were oxygenated in the Ediacaran period over 540 million years ago. [9]