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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 ...
ocean floor See seabed. ocean trench A long, narrow, very deep depression in the ocean floor at the junction of two tectonic plates, where one plate is subducted steeply beneath the other, often penetrating the mantle. A bathymetric map looking west across the Caribbean Sea. The purple area is the Puerto Rico Trench, the deepest trench in the ...
Magnetic anomalies off west coast of North America. Dashed lines are spreading centers on mid-ocean ridges. The Vine–Matthews-Morley hypothesis correlates the symmetric magnetic patterns seen on the seafloor with geomagnetic field reversals. At mid-ocean ridges, new crust is created by the injection, extrusion, and solidification of magma.
Scientists believe they’ve discovered an ancient ocean floor comprising a new layer between Earth’s mantle and core.
Also amphidrome and tidal node. A geographical location where there is little or no tide, i.e. where the tidal amplitude is zero or nearly zero because the height of sea level does not change appreciably over time (meaning there is no high tide or low tide), and around which a tidal crest circulates once per tidal period (approximately every 12 hours). Tidal amplitude increases, though not ...
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.
Marine geophysics is the scientific discipline that employs methods of geophysics to study the world's ocean basins and continental margins, particularly the solid earth beneath the ocean. It shares objectives with marine geology , which uses sedimentological , paleontological , and geochemical methods.
Around 6 billion tons of marine sand is being dug up each year in a growing practice that a U.N. agency said is unsustainable and can wipe out local marine life irreversibly. Sand is the most ...