Oceanography midterm
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Oceanography midterm
What are the four types of Oceanography? Define each.
1. Geological - Ocean floor and sediments
2. Chemical - Elements contained in ocean, H2O
3. Physical - Waves, Tides, and Energy
4. Biological - Organisms
What are the four main oceans? And one more?
Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, Artic, Southern
For the different oceans, make sure you know which one is the:
1. Largest
2. Deepest
3. Shallowest
1. Pacific
2. Pacific
3. Artic
(Pacific: Oldest, Atlantic: Youngest)
Identify the composition of the following layers:
1. Crust
2. Mantle
3. Core
1. Silicates - ocean-basalt, continents, granite
2. Magnesium and Iron, Melted
3. Iron & Nickel
Where do most scientists think the water on our planet came from?
Out-gassing, water vapor and other gasses from the earth's interior
What is the continental drift? Who proposed the idea?
Alfred Wegener. Continents were once one lard land mass know as Tangea.
Name 3 pieces of evidence for continental drift.
Plant fossils: pangea, pantholassas
Rocks, fossils, climate, puzzle like fit
What does the Theory of Plate Tetonics state?
Earth's crust is divided into several plates that move independently of one another in response to the heat flow in crust.
Describe the process of Sea-Floor Spreading.
As plates move apart, new ocean crust is created at mid-ocean ridge and destroyed at deep-sea ridge due to subduction.
Who proposed the Sea-Floor Spreading Process?
Harry Hess
What is thought to cause Sea-Floor Spreading and Continental Drift?
Magnetic pull
Describe how magnetic reversal helped to support Sea-floor spreading.
The rocks had stripes that indicated changes in the magnetism
How old is the ocean floor.
180 million years old.
What are the three types of plate boundaries?
Divergent, Convergent, Transform
D = moving apart mid-A ridge
C = towards each other, Eurasia and India
T = Sliding past each other
How did geologists discover hydrothermal vents?
Heat differences in the ocean.
How does a hydrothermal vent form? Why are they beneficial?
Sea water seeps into cracks and is heated by the magma beneath the sea floor. The
pressure from the heated water pushed the heated water up through vents in the sea floor.
What allows for organisms to live near hydrothermal vents?
Bacteria that use chemosynthia to produce food.
What is the difference between a black and white smoker?
Black has metals, white does not.
Where are most vents located?
Plate boundaries.
Where is the greatest quantity of sediments found?
Farther away from oceanic ridge.
How is echolocation and sonar used to map out the ocean floor?
Amount of time the sonar wave takes to bounce back determines depth.
Studying the sea floor is studying what type of Earth process?
Sea floor spreading.
How does the Hawaiian Islands form?
As the plate moves over the hot spots, magma breaks through the crust and solidifies to create new land
What is the deepest part of the ocean? Part of what trench?
Mariana Trench.
Define Paleonmagnetism.
The study of the orientation of the magnetic particle in the rock. Pangea.
Define Pangea.
Supercontinent; 255 million years ago
Define Supercontinent.
An aggregation of several continental land masses
Define Plate boundaries.
The narrow regions where plates meet
Define Archimedies Principle.
Principle stating that buoyant forces and floating objects are equal to the weight of the weight of the displaced fluid.
Define Atlantic Type Margins.
Passive margins.
Define Pacific Type Margins.
At a plate boundary dominated by tectonic activity.
Continental margin.
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The submerged edge of the continent transitions between continent and ocean floor.
Continental shelf.
The submerged flat part of the continental margin, where you stand when you are ankle deep.
Continental slope.
The steeply sloping region of the continental margin descends at a rate greater than
1 ft for every 40 ft.
Submarine canyon.
V-shaped cuts in the continental shelf.
Abyssal fan.
Fan shaped sedimentary feature found at the base of submarine canyons.
Continental rise.
The sediment laden boundary between continental and oceanic crust.
Abyssal plain.
Flat, featureless area of the sea floor
Sea mounts.
Isolated volcanic mountains beneath the surface with a vertical height of 1000 meters
Guyots.
Flat-topped sea mounts.
Turbidity current.
A density driven flow of suspended materials
Plate-boundaries.
Narrow regions where plates meet.
Atlantic type margins.
Passive margins that are not seismically active.
Pacific type margins.
Active margins that are seismically active.
Subduction.
The down thrusting of one plate beneath another.
Asthenosphere.
The weak, plastic upper layer of Earth's mantle over which the plates move.
Lithosphere.
The crust and part of the upper mantle.