Summary
Abyssal plains are flat areas of the ocean floor in a water depth between 3,500 and 5,000 with a gradient well below 0.1°. They occupy around 28 % of the global seafloor. The thickness of the sediment cover seldom exceeds 1,000 m, and the sediments consist of fine-grained erosional detritus and biogenic particles. The first global map of seafloor physiography, published by Heezen and Tharp in 1977, illustrated that the bottom of the ocean is bordered by continental margins of variable width and hosts large submarine mountain chains, the mid-ocean ridges. It also illustrated that between the continental margins and mid-ocean ridges, there exist vast flat and almost featureless regions, the so-called abyssal plains (Fig. 1). The global seafloor map has been refined in recent years (e.g., by Smith and Sandwell, 1995; Becker et al., 2009), in a way that has allowed to perform quantitative analyses of the global distribution of specific seafloor features (Harris et al., 2014).
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Bibliography
Becker, J. J., Sandwell, D. T., Smith, W. H. F., Braud, J., Binder, B., Depner, J., Fabre, D., Factor, J., Ingalls, S., Kim, S. H., Ladner, R., Marks, K., Nelson, S., Pharaoh, A., Trimmer, R., Von Rosenberg, J., Wallace, G., and Weatherall, P., 2009. Global bathymetry and elevation data at 30 arc seconds resolution: SRTM30_PLUS. Marine Geodesy, 32, 355–371.
Harris, P. T., Macmillan-Lawler, M., Rupp, J., and Baker, E. K., 2014. Geomorphology of the oceans. Marine Geology, 352, 4–24.
Heezen, B.C., Tharp, M., 1977. World ocean floor panorama. In full color, painted by H. Berann, Mercator Projection, scale 1:23,230,300, 1168 × 1930mm, New York
IHO, 2008. Standardization of Undersea Feature Names: Guidelines Proposal form Terminology, 4th edn. Monaco: International Hydrographic Organisation and Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission.
Müller, D., Sdrolias, M., Gaina, C., and Roest, W. R., 2008. Age, spreading rates, and spreading asymmetry of the world’s ocean crust. Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems, 9(4), doi:10.1029/2007GC001743
Ryan, W. B. F., Carbotte, S. M., Coplan, J. O., O’Hara, S., Melkonian, A., Arko, R., Weissel, R. A., Ferrini, V., Goodwillie, A., Nitsche, F., Bonczkowski, J., and Zemsky, R., 2009. Global multi-resolution topography synthesis. Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems, 10, Q03014.
Smith, W. H. F., and Sandwell, D. T., 1995. Bathymetric prediction from dense satellite altimetry and sparse shipboard bathymetry. Oceanographic Literature Review, 42, 409.
Whittaker, J. M., Goncharov, A., Williams, S. E., Müller, R. D., and Leitchenkov, G., 2013. Global sediment thickness data set updated for the Australian-Antarctic Southern Ocean. Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems, 14, 3297–3305.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this entry
Cite this entry
Voelker, D. (2014). Abyssal Plains. In: Harff, J., Meschede, M., Petersen, S., Thiede, J. (eds) Encyclopedia of Marine Geosciences. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6644-0_211-2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6644-0_211-2
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Online ISBN: 978-94-007-6644-0
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Earth and Environm. ScienceReference Module Physical and Materials ScienceReference Module Earth and Environmental Sciences
Publish with us
Chapter history
-
Latest
Abyssal Plains- Published:
- 27 November 2014
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6644-0_211-2
-
Original
Subsidence: Marine Geosciences- Published:
- 22 September 2014
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6644-0_211-1