Define A Ocean Floor Rift

The most popular mechanism for this outward movement is sliding along the volcano ocean floor interface which consists of easily deformable sediments e g.

Define a ocean floor rift.

By the late 1960s several american investigators among them jack e. Rift valley definition graben. Isacks had integrated this notion of seafloor spreading with that of drifting continents and formulated the basis of plate tectonic theory. Hess theory was that new seafloor is formed when magma is forced upward toward the surface at a mid ocean ridge.

A long narrow valley lying between two normal geologic faults. This divergent plate boundary moves apart at a rate of 2 5 cm per year relatively slow for a divergent plate boundary and rises 2 3 km above the ocean floor. As the two active rifts continue to open eventually the. A rift valley is a lowland region that forms where earth s tectonic plates move apart or rift rift valleys are found both on land and at the bottom of the ocean where they are created by the process of seafloor spreading rift valleys differ from river valleys and glacial valleys in that they are created by tectonic activity and not the process of erosion.

Oliver and bryan l. Individually ocean ridges are the largest features in ocean basins. Stress orientation of its huge neighbor and has adopted the same rift zone orientation from fiske jackson 1972. The ocean floor is thus pushed at right angles and in opposite directions away from the crests.

Ocean definition the vast body of salt water that covers almost three fourths of the earth s surface. Collectively the oceanic ridge system is the most prominent feature on earth s surface after the. Oceanic ridge continuous submarine mountain chain extending approximately 80 000 km 50 000 miles through all the world s oceans. If spreading continues past the incipient stage described above two of the rift arms will open while the third arm stops opening and becomes a failed rift or aulacogen.

Rift valleys usually form where the earth s lithosphere has become thin through extension associated with plate tectonic processes.