Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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 ...
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 ...
Though generally described as several separate oceans, the world's oceanic waters constitute one global, interconnected body of salt water sometimes referred to as the World Ocean or Global Ocean. [1] [2] This concept of a continuous body of water with relatively free interchange among its parts is of fundamental importance to oceanography. [3]
The neritic zone (or sublittoral zone) is the relatively shallow part of the ocean above the drop-off of the continental shelf, approximately 200 meters (660 ft) in depth.
The hadal zone, also known as the hadopelagic zone, is the deepest region of the ocean, lying within oceanic trenches.The hadal zone ranges from around 6 to 11 km (3.7 to 6.8 mi; 20,000 to 36,000 ft) below sea level, and exists in long, narrow, topographic V-shaped depressions.
Trenches were not clearly defined until the late 1940s and 1950s. The bathymetry of the ocean was poorly known prior to the Challenger expedition of 1872–1876, [12] which took 492 soundings of the deep ocean. [13] At station #225, the expedition discovered Challenger Deep, [14] now known to be the southern end of the Mariana Trench.
Get AOL Mail for FREE! Manage your email like never before with travel, photo & document views. Personalize your inbox with themes & tabs. You've Got Mail!
It is one of the three major zones of the ocean floor, the other two being deep-ocean basins and mid-ocean ridges. The continental margin consists of three different features: the continental rise, the continental slope, and the continental shelf. [1] Continental margins constitute about 28% of the oceanic area. [2]