How are seafloor features formed?

As plates converge, one plate may move under the other causing earthquakes, forming volcanoes, or creating deep ocean trenches. Where plates diverge from each other, molten magma flows upward between the plates, forming mid-ocean ridges, underwater volcanoes, hydrothermal vents, and new ocean floor crust.

What is a sea floor feature?

Seafloor Features. Seafloor Features Name:________________________________ Name the seafloor feature described: A wide water way connecting two larger bodies of water, inlet of the ocean or sea. Sound.

What features form seafloor spreading?

seafloor spreading, theory that oceanic crust forms along submarine mountain zones, known collectively as the mid-ocean ridge system, and spreads out laterally away from them.

How are seafloor features identified from space?

How are seafloor features identified from space? Sonar-based (sounding) instruments mounted on ships can distinguish the shape (bathymetry) of the seafloor. … But such maps can only be made for places where ships and sonar pass frequently.

How was new oceanic crust formed?

The oceanic crust

Oceanic crust is formed as a result of decompression melting in the mantle at relatively shallow depths below the mid-ocean ridges, as the mantle rises in passive response to plate separation.

What is the seafloor made of?

The ocean floor itself is made of mafic rocks, the crystallized matter from silicate magma. … Minerals found under the seabed include gabbro, basalt, serpentine, peridotite, olivine and ore minerals from VMS.

What is formed on top of one of the oceanic crust?

Oceanic crust is about 6 km (4 miles) thick. It is composed of several layers, not including the overlying sediment. The topmost layer, about 500 metres (1,650 feet) thick, includes lavas made of basalt (that is, rock material consisting largely of plagioclase [feldspar] and pyroxene).

What makes up oceanic crust?

Oceanic crust is generally composed of dark-colored rocks called basalt and gabbro. It is thinner and denser than continental crust, which is made of light-colored rocks called andesite and granite. The low density of continental crust causes it to “float” high atop the viscous mantle, forming dry land.

Why is the oceanic crust made of basalt?

Magmas generated by melting of Earth’s mantle rise up below the oceanic crust and erupt on Earth’s surface at mid-ocean ridge systems, the longest mountain ranges in the world. When the magma cools it forms basalt, the planet’s most-common rock and the basis for oceanic crust.

What layers make up the oceanic crust?

Not including a sedimentary cover of variable thickness and composition, the oceanic crust consists of three layers: (1) a relatively thin uppermost volcanic layer of basaltic lavas known as mid-ocean ridge basalts (MORB) erupted on the seafloor; (2) a thicker layer of more coarsely crystalline, intrusive basaltic …

How are continental masses and ocean floors formed?

In places where convection currents rise up towards the crust’s surface, tectonic plates move away from each other in a process known as seafloor spreading (Fig. 7.21). Hot magma rises to the crust’s surface, cracks develop in the ocean floor, and the magma pushes up and out to form mid-ocean ridges.

How does the new seafloor form at the mid-ocean ridge?

Mid-ocean ridges occur along divergent plate boundaries, where new ocean floor is created as the Earth’s tectonic plates spread apart. As the plates separate, molten rock rises to the seafloor, producing enormous volcanic eruptions of basalt.

What causes tectonic plates to move?

The heat from radioactive processes within the planet’s interior causes the plates to move, sometimes toward and sometimes away from each other. This movement is called plate motion, or tectonic shift.

How are ocean ridges formed a level?

A mid-ocean ridge or mid-oceanic ridge is an underwater mountain range, formed by plate tectonics. This uplifting of the ocean floor occurs when convection currents rise in the mantle beneath the oceanic crust and create magma where two tectonic plates meet at a divergent boundary.

How are mountains formed?

Mountains are huge rocky features of the earth’s landscape. They are formed by tectonic plates moving together and pushing up until tall structures are formed. The world’s mountain ranges are created by the same forces that trigger earthquakes and volcanoes.

How do tectonic plates move a level geography?

The main impetus behind plate tectonics is convection in the mantle. Hot material close to the Earth’s center ascents, and colder mantle rock sinks. It is sort of like a pot bubbling on a stove.

How are the ocean crusts moving?

Seafloor spreading occurs at divergent plate boundaries. As tectonic plates slowly move away from each other, heat from the mantle’s convection currents makes the crust more plastic and less dense. The less-dense material rises, often forming a mountain or elevated area of the seafloor. Eventually, the crust cracks.

How are continental plates formed?

Continental plates are formed due to cooling of magma. two plates collide with each other when one plate moves down another. The plate moving down gets heated tremendously due to the internal heat of the Earth and melts this way it gets destroyed.

What are the different geologic features formed when continental plate and oceanic plate collides?

Deep ocean trenches, volcanoes, island arcs, submarine mountain ranges, and fault lines are examples of features that can form along plate tectonic boundaries.

What happens when two oceanic plates move away from each other?

A divergent boundary occurs when two tectonic plates move away from each other. Along these boundaries, earthquakes are common and magma (molten rock) rises from the Earth’s mantle to the surface, solidifying to create new oceanic crust.

What geologic feature will be formed when two oceanic plates collide?

subduction zone

A subduction zone is also generated when two oceanic plates collide — the older plate is forced under the younger one — and it leads to the formation of chains of volcanic islands known as island arcs.

When an ocean plate converges with another plate what is created on the seafloor at the line of convergence?

When an oceanic plate converges with another plate what is created on the seafloor at the line of convergence? As with oceanic-continental convergence, when two oceanic plates converge, one is usually subducted under the other, and in the process a trench is formed.