Floor Of An Ocean Basin

Sunlight does not penetrate to the sea floor making these deep dark ecosystems less productive than those along.

Floor of an ocean basin.

Together they contain the overwhelming majority of all water on the planet and have an average depth of almost 4 km about 2 5 miles. Continuing your journey across the ocean basin you would descend the steep continental slope to the abyssal plain. Deep ocean drilling and radiometric dating in the late 1960s gave an accurate stratigraphy and precise date of the ocean floor. Ocean basin ocean basin deep sea sediments.

Older references e g littlehales 1930 consider the oceanic basins to be the complement to the continents with erosion dominating the latter and the sediments so derived ending up in the ocean basins. From studying the oxygen isotopes of the shells of microfossils in these cores scientists were able to begin studying the earth s past climates in a study known as paleoclimatology. About 70 of the planet s surface is made up of ocean basins which are the regions that are below sea level these areas hold the majority of the planet s water. In fact it will.

The ocean basins are partially bounded by the continents but they are interconnected which is why marine scientists refer to a single world ocean the world ocean is divided into the north and south pacific north and south atlantic indian and arctic oceans. Ocean basin floor the ocean floor in those parts of the oceans that are more than 2000 m deep. The ocean basin floor is everywhere covered by sediments of different types and origins. At depths of over 10 000 feet and covering 70 of the ocean floor abyssal plains are the largest habitat on earth.

Since the new oceanic basins are shallower than the old oceanic basins the total capacity of the world s ocean basins decreases during times of active sea floor spreading. Oceanographers also recognize the southern ocean which encircles antarctica and includes the southernmost parts of the pacific. The only exception are the crests of the spreading centres where new ocean floor has not existed long enough to accumulate a sediment cover. Ocean basin any of several vast submarine regions that collectively cover nearly three quarters of earth s surface.

A number of major features of the basins depart. It occupies approximately one third of the atlantic and indian ocean floors and three quarters of the pacific ocean floor.