Abstract
The results of a multivariate classification of ocean basins is presented, based on an existing digital global map of seafloor features that are related to major phases of evolution, namely young, mature, declining and terminal evolutionary stages. “Young” basins are characterised by the absence of ocean trenches, young ocean crust (<8 MA), large areas of continental slope, thick sediments, and large percentage area of mid-ocean ridge rift valley (above 1.7%). “Mature” ocean basins are characterised by relatively thick sediment deposits (mean of 940 m), large percentage areas of continental rise (mean of 19.8%) and large areas of submarine fans (mean of 4.3%). The area of ocean trench is relatively small in all “mature” ocean basins, ranging from 0 to 0.3%. A defining geomorphic feature of the “declining” category is that around 1% of their area is trench. “Declining” ocean basins contain the highest concentration of seamounts (3.5–5 seamounts per 100,000 km2), which is more than double the mean value (1.4 seamounts per 100,000 km2) that occurs for the “mature” category with the next highest concentration. The “terminal” category of ocean basins is characterised by the greatest mean sediment thickness (4311 m) and greatest percentage area of submarine fans (7.2%) of any ocean basin. Bottom water occurring within 33 major bathymetric basins (located within the broader ocean basins) is found to exhibit a spatial relationship to near-bottom dissolved oxygen (DO) concentrations. Gradients of decreasing DO concentration suggests bottom water pathways within basins and between adjacent basins of similar (or greater) depth.
Notes
- 1.
Although the oceans are commonly stated as covering 72% of the earth, this figure includes the (submerged) continental shelves, which are geologically extensions of the continents and not part of the ocean basins. Continental shelves cover an area of 32,242,540 km2 or 8.91% of the oceans (Harris et al. 2014).
- 2.
VLIZ (2005). IHO Sea Areas. Available online at http://www.marineregions.org/. Consulted on 2016-04-04.
References
Atwater BF, Carson B, Griggs GB, Johnson HP, Salmi MS (2014) Rethinking turbidite paleoseismology along the Cascadia subduction zone. Geology 42:827–830
Augustin N, Devey CW, van der Zwan FM, Feldens P, Tominaga M, Bantan RA, Kwasnitschka T (2014) The rifting to spreading transition in the Red Sea. Earth Planet Sci Lett 395:217–230
Backman J, Jakobsson M, Løvlie R, Polyak L, Febo LA (2004) Is the central Arctic Ocean a sediment starved basin? Quat Sci Rev 23:1435–1454
Baker BH, Mohr PA, Williams LAJ (1972) Geology of the eastern rift system of Africa. Geol Soc Am Spec Pap 136:1–68
Becker JJ, Sandwell DT, Smith WHF, Braud J, Binder B, Depner J, Fabre D, Factor J, Ingalls S, Kim SH, Ladner R, Marks K, Nelson S, Pharaoh A, Trimmer R, Von Rosenberg J, Wallace G, Weatherall P (2009) Global bathymetry and elevation data at 30 arc seconds resolution: SRTM30_PLUS. Mar Geodesy 32:355–371
Broecker WS (1991) The great ocean conveyor. Oceanography 4:79–89
De Mol B, Amblas D, Alvarez G, Busquets P, Calafat A, Canals M, Duran R, Lavoie C, Acosta J, Muñoz A (2012) Cold-water coral distribution in an erosional environment: the strait of gibraltar gateway. In: Harris PT, Baker EK (eds) Seafloor geomorphology as benthic habitat: GeoHAB atlas of seafloor geomorphic features and benthic habitats. Elsevier, Amsterdam, pp 636–643
Divins DL (2003) Thickness of sedimentary cover in the Eastern Pacific Ocean. In: Udintsev GB (ed) International geological atlas of the Pacific Ocean. Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, Moscow, St Petersburg, pp 120–130
Gardner JV, Armstrong AA (2011) The Mariana trench: a new view based on multibeam echo sounding, American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2011. American Geophysical Union, San Francisco
Gille ST, Metzger EJ, Tokmakian R (2004) Seafloor topography and ocean circulation. Oceanography 17:47–54
Harris PT, Whiteway T (2011) Global distribution of large submarine canyons: geomorphic differences between active and passive continental margins. Mar Geol 285:69–86
Harris PT, MacMillan-Lawler M, Rupp J, Baker EK (2014) Geomorphology of the oceans. Mar Geol 352:4–24
Hess HH (1962) History of ocean basins. In: Engel AEJ, James HL, Leonard BF (eds) Petrologic studies: a volume in honor of A. F. Buddington. Geological Society of America, New York, pp 599–620
Hillier JK, Watts AB (2005) Relationship between depth and age in the North Pacific Ocean. J Geophys Res 110:405
Hillier JK, Watts AB (2007) Global distribution of seamounts from ship-track bathymetry data. Geophys Res Lett 34:13
Hillier JK, Tilmann F, Hovius N (2008) Submarine geomorphology: new views on an ‘unseen’ landscape. Basin Res 20:467–472
IHO (2008) Standardization of undersea feature names: guidelines, proposal, form, terminology, 4th edn. International Hydrographic Organisation and Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, Monaco, p 32
Ivanov VV, Shapiro GI, Huthnance JM, Aleynik DL, Golovin PN (2004) Cascades of dense water around the world ocean. Prog Oceanogr 60:47–98
Jamieson AJ, Fujii T, Mayor DJ, Solan M, Priede IG (2010) Hadal trenches: the ecology of the deepest places on Earth. Trends Ecol Evol 25:190–197
Long MC, Deutsch C, Ito T (2016) Finding forced trends in oceanic oxygen. Global Biogeochem Cycles 30:381–397
Muller RD, Roest WR, Royer JY, Gahagan LM, Sclater JG (1997) Digital isochrons of the world’s ocean floor. J Geophys Res 102:3211–3214
Nicholson C, Sorlien CC, Atwater T, Crowell JC, Luyendyk BP (1994) Microplate capture, rotation of the western transverse ranges, and initiation of the San Andreas transform as a low-angle fault system. Geology 22:491–495
O’Grady DB, Syvitski JPM, Pratson LF, Sarg JF (2000) Categorizing the morphologic variability of siliciclastic passive continental margins. Geology 28:207–210. http://elpub.wdcb.ru/journals/rjes/v06/tje04146/tje04146.htm
Pushcharovsky YM (2006) Tectonic types of the Pacific abyssal basins. Geotectonics 40:345–356
Ricou L-E (1996) The plate tectonic history of the past Tethys Ocean. In: Nairn AEM, Ricou L-E, Vrielynck B, Dercourt J (eds) The Tethys Ocean. Springer, Boston, pp 3–70
Rintoul SR (2007) Rapid freshening of Antarctic bottom water formed in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Geophys Res Lett 34:6. doi:10.1029/2006GL028550
Schmitz WJ, McCartney MS (1993) On the north Atlantic circulation. Rev Geophys 31:29–49
Smith WH, Sandwell DT (1997) Global sea floor topography from satellite altimetry and ship depth soundings. Science 277:1956–1962
Stow DAV (2010) Vanished ocean: how Tethys reshaped the world. Oxford University Press, 300 pp
Tchernia P (1980) Descriptive regional oceanography. Pergamon Marine Series, Oxford
Wessel P (2001) Global distribution of seamounts inferred from gridded Geosat/ERS-1 altimetry. J Geophys Res 106:19431–19441
Whitehead JA (1998) Topographic control of oceanic flows in deep passages and straits. Rev Geophys 36:423–440
Wilson JT (1966) Did the Atlantic close and then reopen? Nature 211:676–681
NOAA (2005) World ocean atlas data. Available from: http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/WOA05/pr_woa05.html
Wright J, Rothery DA (1998) The ocean basins: their structure and evolution, 2nd edn. Elsevier Ltd., Open University, Milton Keynes, UK
Yesson C, Clark MR, Taylor ML, Rogers AD (2011) The global distribution of seamounts based on 30 arc seconds bathymetry data. Deep Sea Res Part I 58:442–453
Acknowledgements
The work described in this paper was produced with financial support from GRID-Arendal.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Harris, P.T., Macmillan-Lawler, M. (2018). Origin and Geomorphic Characteristics of Ocean Basins. In: Micallef, A., Krastel, S., Savini, A. (eds) Submarine Geomorphology. Springer Geology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57852-1_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57852-1_8
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-57851-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-57852-1
eBook Packages: Earth and Environmental ScienceEarth and Environmental Science (R0)