Map Of Age Of Ocean Floor And Explanation

Data collected by satellites and remote sensing instruments were used to created a model at least twice as.

Map of age of ocean floor and explanation.

Sio reference series 93 30 scripps institution of oceanography. Examine the color code to understand how the age of rocks changes from the center to the edges of the ocean floor. Shortly after the conclusion of world war ii sonar equipped vessels crisscrossed the oceans collecting ocean depth profiles of the seafloor beneath them. To get the dependence on x one must substitute t x v ax l where l is the distance between the ridge to the continental shelf roughly half the ocean width and a is the ocean basin age.

A digital age map of the ocean floor. The data are described in a data and analysis note in the journal of geophysical research 1997 entitled digital isochrons of the world s ocean floor. 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 what they discovered was that the magnetism of the ocean floor around. The data is from four companion digital models of the age age uncertainty spreading rates and spreading asymmetries of the world s ocean basins.

The survey data was used to create three dimensional relief maps of the ocean floor and by 1953 american oceanic cartographer marie tharp had created the first of several maps that revealed the presence of an underwater mountain range. In the 1950s and 1960s marine geologists such as bruce heezen marie tharp and henry menard used data from echo sounders to map ocean ridges in the north atlantic and the pacific. Therefore seafloor dating isn t that useful for studying plate motions beyond the cretaceous. Consider how the age of rocks is related to the shape of the seafloor you saw in step 3.

Because of this correlation between age and subduction potential very little ocean floor is older than 125 million years and almost none of it is older than 200 million years. Contours of 20 million years are available as a layer that is currently set to invisible. For that geologists date and study continental crust. Researchers today published the most detailed map of the ocean floor ever produced.

The following features are shown at example depths to scale though each feature has a considerable range at which it may occur. They noticed first that these ridges stretched on for thousands of kilometers in long continuous mountain chains that wound around the earth s surface almost. Rather than height of the ocean floor above a base or reference level the depth of the ocean is of interest. The magnetism of mid ocean ridges helped scientists first identify the process of seafloor spreading in the early 20th century.

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