Sea Sediment Types and Their Distribution For ages mankind has struggled to map the geologic features of its surroundings, scaling tall peaks to measure elevation and traversing deadly deserts to expand the horizons of cartography, but the exploration of land typically ended where the sand met the sea. Although seafaring ships have allowed humanity to navigate the ocean's surface for millennia, the ability to accurately map and analyze the seafloor is a relatively modern innovation. The advent of sonar-aided bathymetric techniques, in the early 20th century, and satellite altimeters today, has allowed scientists and researchers to develop highly accurate, adaptable maps of the seafloor which reflect the shifts in sediment patterns caused by underwater currents. Deep sea exploration through the use of submarine vehicles has also enabled the scientific community to closely analyze the properties and physical makeup of the various strata...
We now know that "seafloor sediments can be classified according to their origin into three broad categories: (1) terrigenous ('derived from land'), (2) biogenous ('derived from organisms'), and (3) hydrogenous ('derived from water')" (Lutgen, Tarbuck & Tasa, 2011), while each type of sediment is distributed across the seafloor due to a confluence of external factors.
Seafloor Sediments What are the different types of seafloor sediments? The three main types / categories of seafloor sediments are Terrigenous sediment, Biogenous sediment, and Hydrogenous sediments. Terrigenous sediment covers about 45% of the ocean floors, and originated from the erosion of land near the ocean's edge, from volcanic eruptions, and from dust that has blown from land to the oceans (Garrison, 2011). Terrigenous sediments are composed of quartz sand, clays, and estuarine
Features of the Ocean Floor Continental Margins As one travels away from the continents, water depths increase in a systematic manner. Closest to the continents are continental shelves with water depth typically less than 1000 m. Continental shelves were formed as rivers carried tons of particles of sand and soil from the land out to sea. This sand and soil then settled as layers of sediments, or layers of particles of rock
In fact, the entire damage was caused by the tsunami itself along with other factors like the geology and geography of the region. The damage that the tsunami caused to mainland India, a seismically quiescent region, was concentrated mainly on the eastern coastline but some damage due to diffraction also occurred on the southernmost tip of the western coastline. A factor which played a major role in the scale
Pollutants Compound Threats to Coral Reefs and What That Means for the Ocean and Us Humans POLLUTANTS AND CORAL REEFS All over the world, the existence of coral reefs in the oceans face a lot of danger caused by pollutant compounds. A lot of consideration therefore needs to be put in place to access the effects caused by these pollutants on human beings and possible remedies on the impact of the
Where, sharp increases or decreases in the temperature could have an effect on the eco system. As any one of the vital pieces of the food system and their way of life; would have ripple effects based on slight changes in temperature. This has the possibility of setting off a mass extinction. (Garrison, 2008) The obvious effect on land would be that humans depend on the ocean as a source
Global Warming: Is it Really a Threat? Global warming has become a modern issue of considerable significance. It has been the subject of many debates, articles and conferences. Despite the amount of debate around the issue, there is still no clear conclusion. Yet the possible consequences that are attributed to the threat are highly concerning. As one report describes: The most recent projections of state-of-the-art computer models of the Earth's climate (GCMs)
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