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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 ...
Marine geology or geological oceanography is the study of the history and structure of the ocean floor. It involves geophysical, geochemical, sedimentological and paleontological investigations of the ocean floor and coastal zone. Marine geology has strong ties to geophysics and to physical oceanography.
The oceanic crust displays a pattern of magnetic lines, parallel to the ocean ridges, frozen in the basalt. A symmetrical pattern of positive and negative magnetic lines emanates from the mid-ocean ridge. [24] New rock is formed by magma at the mid-ocean ridges, and the ocean floor spreads out from this point.
Oceanic trenches are prominent, long, narrow topographic depressions of the ocean floor. They are typically 50 to 100 kilometers (30 to 60 mi) wide and 3 to 4 km (1.9 to 2.5 mi) below the level of the surrounding oceanic floor, but can be thousands of kilometers in length.
Objectives of marine geophysics include determination of the depth and features of the seafloor, the seismic structure and earthquakes in the ocean basins, the mapping of gravity and magnetic anomalies over the basins and margins, the determination of heat flow through the seafloor, and electrical properties of the ocean crust and Earth's mantle.
An abyssal plain is an underwater plain on the deep ocean floor, usually found at depths between 3,000 and 6,000 metres (9,800 and 19,700 ft).Lying generally between the foot of a continental rise and a mid-ocean ridge, abyssal plains cover more than 50% of the Earth's surface.
Perspective view of the sea floor of the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea. The purple sea floor at the center of the view is the Puerto Rico Trench. Roughly 97% of the planet's water is in its oceans, and the oceans are the source of the vast majority of water vapor that condenses in the atmosphere and falls as rain or snow on the continents.
Benthic organisms can be divided into two categories based on whether they make their home on the ocean floor or a few centimeters into the ocean floor. Those living on the surface of the ocean floor are known as epifauna. [13] Those who live burrowed into the ocean floor are known as infauna. [10]