What Is The Continental Slope

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What is continental slope answer?

Filters. The sloping region between a continental shelf and a continental rise. A continental slope is typically about 20 km (12.4 mi) wide consists of muds and silts and is often crosscut by submarine canyons.

What is continental slope simple?

A continental slope is defined by the IHO as “the slope seaward from the shelf to the upper edge of a continental rise or the point where there is a general reduction of slope.

What is a continental slope in geology?

Abstract. The continental slope is defined as the zone extending from the shelf break and terminating at the continental rise where the gradient becomes less than 1:40 or where the slope is bounded by a deep-sea trench or a marginal plateau.

What is the continental slope on land?

continental slope seaward border of the continental shelf. … The gradient of the slope is lowest off stable coasts without major rivers and highest off coasts with young mountain ranges and narrow continental shelves. Most Pacific slopes are steeper than Atlantic slopes.

What is continental slope Wikipedia?

From Coastal Wiki. Definition of Continental slope: The sloping sea bottom of the continental margin that begins at a depth of about 100 to 150 meters at the shelf edge and ends at the top of the continental rise or in a deep-sea trench.

What is the continental slope quizlet?

Continental slope. the steep gradient that leads to the deep-ocean floor and marks the seaward edge of the continental shelf.

What slope is continental slope?

Compared with the relatively flat surface and gentle inclination of the continental shelf the continental slope dips steeply into the ocean basins at an average angle of around 4° although it may be much steeper locally (35 to 90°).

Where is the continental rise?

The continental rise is a low-relief zone of accumulated sediments that lies between the continental slope and the abyssal plain. It is a major part of the continental margin covering around 10% of the ocean floor.

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What comes after continental slope?

The shelf usually ends at a point of increasing slope (called the shelf break). The sea floor below the break is the continental slope. Below the slope is the continental rise which finally merges into the deep ocean floor the abyssal plain.

What animals live in the continental slope?

Different Slope Communities

Dover sole sablefish and rockfish (fig. 4) have this type of life history however most species living deeper such as rattails deep-sea soles and slickheads have young that live in the same depths as adults. Relatively few species occur at all or most depths on the Continental Slope.

What is in the continental rise?

A continental rise is a wide gentle incline from a deep ocean plain (abyssal plain) to a continental slope. A continental rise consists mainly of silts mud and sand deposited by turbidity flows and can extend for several hundreds of miles away from continental margins.

Why are continental shelves important?

The significance of the continental shelf is that it may contain valuable minerals and shellfish. UNCLOS addresses the issue of jurisdiction over these resources by allocating sovereign rights to the coastal State for exploration and exploitation.

How is a continental rise formed?

Continental rises form as a result of three sedimentary processes: mass wasting the deposition from contour currents and the vertical settling of clastic and biogenic particles.

Which of the following types of slope does the continental slope have?

Answer: Although the continental slope averages about 4° it can approach vertical on carbonate margins on faulted margins or on leading-edge tectonically active margins. Steep slopes usually have either a very poorly developed continental rise or none at all and are called escarpments.

What is the difference between continental slope and continental rise?

1 – The continental slope is shallower and 2 – steeper than the continental rise. 3 – The continental slope is made of continental crust but the continental rise is made of sediment. … Turbidity currents carry a lot of sediment down the continental slopes leaving canyons behind.

How is a continental slope formed quizlet?

How is the continental slope formed? They are formed when muddy sediments are washed away or scraped off of the top of the continental plate. The structure then becomes unstable. When the edge becomes unstable the sediments slough off and forms a continental slope.

What are continental shelves quizlet?

continental shelf. the sloping shelf of land consisting of the edges of the continents under the ocean.

Where is the continental rise quizlet?

A steep underwater slope that reaches from the edge of the continental shelf to the continental rise. What is a continental rise? The transition between a continental slope and an abyssal plain that slopes gently.

What is the continental slope kid definition?

Continental slopes are the portion of the deep ocean floor that experiences a significant drop at a steep angle.

What is a continental crust?

continental crust the outermost layer of Earth’s lithosphere that makes up the planet’s continents and continental shelves and is formed near subduction zones at plate boundaries between continental and oceanic tectonic plates. The continental crust forms nearly all of Earth’s land surface.

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Where are seamounts located?

mid-ocean ridges
Seamounts are commonly found near the boundaries of Earth’s tectonic plates and mid-plate near hotspots. At mid-ocean ridges plates are spreading apart and magma rises to fill the gaps.

Are there plants in the continental slope?

Sunlight penetrates the shallow waters and many kinds of organisms flourish—from microscopic shrimp to giant seaweed called kelp. Ocean currents and runoff from rivers bring nutrients to organisms that live on continental shelves. Plants and algae make continental shelves rich feeding grounds for sea creatures.

How deep is the continental rise?

roughly 4 000 to 5 000 metres

Below this lies the continental slope a much steeper zone that usually merges with a section of the ocean floor called the continental rise at a depth of roughly 4 000 to 5 000 metres (13 000 to 16 500 feet).

How much aquatic life is found in the continental shelf?

Ninety percent of the world’s fish are found along the continental shelf. Georges Bank is a shallow underwater plateau off the coast of Maine. It once seemed that there was a limitless abundance of fish lobster and scallops in this fertile area. But populations are rapidly declining due to overfishing.

How is the continental shelf?

The term “continental shelf” is used by geologists generally to mean that part of the continental margin which is between the shoreline and the shelf break or where there is no noticeable slope between the shoreline and the point where the depth of the superjacent water is approximately between 100 and 200 metres.

What is the temperature of the continental shelf?

Sea surface temperature for the Northeast Shelf Ecosystem reached a record high of 14 degrees Celsius (57.2°F) in 2012 exceeding the previous record high in 1951. Average SST has typically been lower than 12.4 C (54.3 F) over the past three decades.

Is India a continental shelf?

The 2493 km-long shoreline of eastern India is fringed with a continental shelf with a variable width of 35 km off Tamil Nadu to 60 km off north Andhra Pradesh and 120 km around Digha. … The east continental shelf of India is characterized by four major deltas the Ganges Mahanadi Krishna–Godavari and Cauvery.

What forces control the shape of the continental shelf A continental slope a continental rise?

Sediments typically control the shape of the continental slopes. A continental rise is the sediment that forms the gentle transition from the outer (lower) edge of the continental slope and the abyssal plain.

How are abyssal plains formed?

Abyssal plains result from the blanketing of an originally uneven surface of oceanic crust by fine-grained sediments mainly clay and silt. Much of this sediment is deposited by turbidity currents that have been channelled from the continental margins along submarine canyons into deeper water.

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What marks the true edge of a continent?

The continental slope marks the true edge of the continent where the rock that makes up the continent stops and the rock of the ocean floor begins. Beyond this slope is the abyssal plain (C) a smooth and nearly flat area of the ocean floor.

What is an abyssal plain quizlet?

Abyssal plains are deep extremely flat features of the ocean floor. They are formed as sediments from coastal regions are transported far out to sea and settle to the ocean floor and as materials from the water column above settle to the bottom.

What are the three primary agents that act to deposit sediments which may eventually become sedimentary rocks?

Sedimentary rocks are formed on or near the Earth’s surface in contrast to metamorphic and igneous rocks which are formed deep within the Earth. The most important geological processes that lead to the creation of sedimentary rocks are erosion weathering dissolution precipitation and lithification.

What is the most prominent feature on the ocean floor?

oceanic ridge system
Individually ocean ridges are the largest features in ocean basins. Collectively the oceanic ridge system is the most prominent feature on Earth’s surface after the continents and the ocean basins themselves.

What is continental rise quizlet?

continental rise. gently sloping accumulation of sediments deposited by a turbidity current at the foot of a continental margin. abyssal plain. smooth flat part of the seafloor covered with muddy sediments and sedimentary rocks that extends seaward from the continental margin. deep-sea trench.