Table of Contents
Where does seafloor spreading occur at?
Seafloor spreading occurs along mid-ocean ridges—large mountain ranges rising from the ocean floor. The Mid-Atlantic Ridge, for instance, separates the North American plate from the Eurasian plate, and the South American plate from the African plate.
Where do underwater mountain chains form?
Mid-ocean ridge
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.
What is the underwater mountain chain called?
mid-ocean ridge
A seamount is an underwater mountain. A rise is an underwater mountain range located where tectonic plates are spreading apart. A rise is also known as a mid-ocean ridge.
Where do earthquakes volcanoes and underwater mountains form?
Most divergent plate boundaries are underwater and form submarine mountain ranges called oceanic spreading ridges. While the process of forming these mountain ranges is volcanic, volcanoes and earthquakes along oceanic spreading ridges are not as violent as they are at convergent plate boundaries.
Which ocean floor features are underwater mountains?
Rising up from the abyssal plain, you would encounter the mid-ocean ridge, an underwater mountain range, over 40,000 miles long, rising to an average depth of 8,000 feet. Tracing their way around the global ocean, this system of underwater volcanoes forms the longest mountain range on Earth.
How are the underwater mountains distributed?
Underwater mountain ranges form due to sea floor spreading, where tectonic plates in the ocean spread apart. As the plates spread apart liquid magma…
What happens as the ocean floor spreads?
Sea-floor spreading is what happens at the mid-oceanic ridge where a divergent boundary is causing two plates to move away from one another resulting in spreading of the sea floor. As the plates move apart, new material wells up and cools onto the edge of the plates.
How does the spreading of the ocean floor occur?
a chain of underwater mountains along which sea floor spreading occurs subduction the process by which the ocean floor sinks beneath a deep ocean trench and back into the mantle sea-floor spreading the process that continually adds new material to the ocean floor
Which is the most extensive chain of mountains on Earth?
The mid-ocean ridge is the most extensive chain of mountains on Earth, stretching nearly 65,000 kilometers (40,390 miles) and with more than 90 percent of the mountain range lying in the deep ocean. The nearly continuous, global mid-ocean ridge system snakes across the Earth’s surface like the seams on a baseball.
When does subduction take place in sea floor spreading?
In sea-floor spreading, new crust is added at a ___. Subduction takes place at ____. Nice work! You just studied 18 terms! Now up your study game with Learn mode.
What is the shape of the mid ocean ridge?
The speed of spreading affects the shape of of ridge – slower spreading rates result in steep, irregular topography while faster spreading rates produce much wider profiles and more gentle slopes. Two well-studied mid-ocean ridges within the global system are the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and the East Pacific Rise.