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A seamount is a large submarine landform that rises from the ocean floor without reaching the water surface (), and thus is not an island, islet, or cliff-rock.Seamounts are typically formed from extinct volcanoes that rise abruptly and are usually found rising from the seafloor to 1,000–4,000 m (3,300–13,100 ft) in height.
The Hawaiian–Emperor seamount chain is a mostly undersea mountain range in the Pacific Ocean that reaches above sea level in Hawaii.It is composed of the Hawaiian ridge, consisting of the islands of the Hawaiian chain northwest to Kure Atoll, and the Emperor Seamounts: together they form a vast underwater mountain region of islands and intervening seamounts, atolls, shallows, banks and reefs ...
Seamounts provide data on movements of tectonic plates on which they ride, and on the rheology of the underlying lithosphere. The trend of a seamount chain traces the direction of motion of the lithospheric plate over a more or less fixed heat source in the underlying asthenosphere, the part of the Earth's mantle beneath the lithosphere. [7]
In the ocean basins, ocean island basalts form seamounts, [3] and in some cases, enough material is erupted that the rock protrudes from the ocean and forms an island, like at Hawaii, Samoa, and Iceland. Over time, however, thermal subsidence and mass loss via subaerial erosion causes islands to become completely submarine seamounts or guyots.
A seamount is a mountain rising from the ocean seafloor that does not reach to the water's surface (sea level), and thus is not an island, islet or Cliff-rock. Seamounts are typically formed from extinct volcanoes that rise abruptly and are usually found rising from the seafloor to 1,000–4,000 m (3,300–13,100 ft) in height.
Axial Seamount's growth has intersected the growth of many of the smaller seamounts around it. The largest of these is Brown Bear Seamount, to which it is connected [8] by a narrow ridge running roughly perpendicular to its western caldera wall. However, little evidence of interactions between the two seamounts has been found. [6]
The volcano is known to have erupted intermediately in an underwater and shallow-water environment. [2] Detroit Seamount has a wide (100,000 square kilometres [39,000 sq mi]) base and rises from the bottom of the abyssal plain to a depth of approximately 1,550 m (5,085 ft); in fact, it is as wide as Hawaii island at the head of the chain.
Any rounded underwater features exceeding that height are referred to as seamounts. [2] They are believed to cover around 16.3% of the world's seafloor. [3] Examples