The Ocean Floor Is Created Along Mid Ocean Ridges

The global mid ocean ridge system is the largest single volcanic feature on the earth encircling it like the seams of a baseball.

The ocean floor is created along mid ocean ridges.

The total length of the ridge is as much as circling around the world to times. The correct order of seafloor features from the coast to the mid ocean ridge is. Long narrow steep sided depression in the seafloor formed where one crustal plate sinks beneath another. The abyssal plain stretched for miles deep below the surface of the ocean.

As the plates separate molten rock rises to the seafloor producing enormous volcanic eruptions of basalt. What they discovered was that the magnetism of the ocean floor around mid ocean ridges was divided into matching stripes on either side of the ridge. Basalt the once molten rock that makes up most new oceanic crust is a fairly magnetic substance and scientists began using magnetometers to measure the magnetism of the ocean floor in the 1950s. A mid ocean ridge is a seafloor mountain system formed by plate tectonics.

Mid ocean ridges occur along divergent plate boundaries where new ocean floor is created as the earth s tectonic plates spread apart. The production of new seafloor and oceanic lithosphere results from mantle upwelling in respo. Here the earth s crust is spreading creating new ocean floor and literally renewing the surface of our planet. Residual unmelted crustal lithosphere.

Because newly formed lithosphere is hotter and therefore less dense than the surrounding rocks which of the following is not part of an ophiolite complex. Older crust is recycled back into the mantle elsewhere on the globe typically where plates collide. The magnetism of mid ocean ridges helped scientists first identify the process of seafloor spreading in the early 20th century. This uplifting of the ocean floor occurs when convection currents rise in the mantle beneath the.

The size of the mid ocean ridge is about 35 000 miles long or 60 000 km and it covers over 23 percent of the earth s surface. Shelf slope rise. The rate of seafloor spreading determines the morphology of the crest of the mid ocean ridge and its width in an ocean basin. The mid ocean ridge is the longest mountain range on earth.

Terms in this set 56 a method of mapping the topography of the ocean floor along a strip up to 60 km wide. Along the crest of mid ocean ridges. What would happen to earth if ocean floor were created at divergent boundaries at a faster rate than it is destroyed at convergent boundaries. This feature is where seafloor spreading takes place along a divergent plate boundary.

Area where new ocean floor is formed when lava erupts through cracks in earth s crust. The majority of the system is underwater with an average water depth to the top of the ridge of 2 500 meters 8 200 feet. Why are mid ocean ridges elevated compared to the surrounding ocean floor. Used to determine ocean structure beneath the sea floor.

It typically has a depth of 2 600 meters and rises about two kilometers above the deepest portion of an ocean basin. New sea floor is formed along mid ocean ridges.