2 Study Area: The Northern Mid-Atlantic Ridge (12°N–36°N) The MAR is a slow spreading mid-ocean ridge (2.5 cm/yr full rate) characterized by a ∼10–20 km wide axial valley
bordered by normal faults
and segmented by transform and nontransform offsets [e.g., Searle and Laughton, 1977; Spencer et al., 1997].
What type of fault is the Mid Ocean Ridge?
Normal faults
play a dominant role in the morphology and internal structure of crust formed at slow-spreading mid-ocean ridges.
Which fault is developed in oceanic ridge?
Transform faults
are commonly found linking segments of divergent boundaries (mid-oceanic ridges or spreading centres). These mid-oceanic ridges are where new seafloor is constantly created through the upwelling of new basaltic magma.
Is the Mid-Atlantic Ridge divergent?
Divergent boundaries. … Perhaps the best known of the divergent boundaries is the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. This submerged mountain range, which extends from the Arctic Ocean to beyond the southern tip of Africa, is but one segment of the global mid-ocean ridge system that encircles the Earth.
Is the Mid-Atlantic Ridge a strike-slip fault?
The Mid Atlantic Ridge is an extensional plate boundary called an oceanic spreading ridge. Oceanic crust is formed along these types of plate boundaries.
Transform faults
are faults that move side-by-side (i.e. strike-slip faults) that offset spreading ridges.
Why do many earthquakes occur along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge?
Some of these earthquakes are caused by
volcanic eruptions
, and others are caused by breaking and ripping of the thin, newly created plate as it spreads to either side of the ridge. … Along the crests of the volcanoes of the mid-ocean ridge, cracks allow the near-freezing sea water to seep deep into the hot new crust.
What kind of faults would you expect to find in the Mid-Atlantic Ridge?
MAR: November 28th. Just south of the mountain runs the Atlantis Transform, an example of another kind of fault. “
Transform faults
” evolved because the Mid-Atlantic Ridge is thought to have originally fractured jaggedly along the ocean floor rather than following a straight path.
Which mid ocean ridge is spreading the slowest?
The Ridge
is named after him, and the name was recognized in April 1987 by SCUFN (under that body's old name, the Sub-Committee on Geographical Names and Nomenclature of Ocean Bottom Features). The ridge is the slowest known spreading ridge on earth, with a rate of less than one centimeter per year.
What can we expect to find at a mid ocean ridge?
Because mid-ocean ridges are places where tectonic plates are pulling apart, you might expect to find an
incredibly deep canyon
, but that's not exactly the case. As the tectonic plates pull apart, molten rock, or magma, comes up from below to fill in the gaps.
What is another name for Mid Ocean Ridge?
A mid-ocean ridge (
MOR
) is a seafloor mountain system formed by plate tectonics.
Why do transform faults form near ocean ridges?
Most transform faults are found along the mid-ocean ridges. The ridge forms
because two plates are pulling apart from each other
. As this happens, magma from below the crust wells up, hardens, and forms new oceanic crust. … The red lines show the transform faults between areas of diverging, or spreading, crust.
Where is the Mid oceanic ridge?
Mid-Atlantic Ridge, submarine ridge
lying along the north-south axis of the Atlantic Ocean
; it occupies the central part of the basin between a series of flat abyssal plains that continue to the margins of the continental coasts.
Which two types of faults do you expect to see at mid-ocean ridges?
All types of faults have been recognized on the ocean floor:
normal faults
occur in the rift valleys associated with mid ocean ridges spreading at slow rates; strike-slip faults appear between the offset portions of mid-ocean ridges; and thrust faults occur at subducting plate boundaries.
Are there earthquakes in the Mid-Atlantic Ridge?
The ridge marks where two tectonic plates are spreading apart (a divergent plate boundary). Most of the mid-Atlantic Ridge is deep underwater and far from human development, but
Iceland
, which sits directly over the mid-Atlantic Ridge, has experienced earthquakes as large as at least M6.
Why is the center of the Atlantic Ocean shallower than areas closer to the continents?
Question: Why is the center of the Atlantic Ocean shallower than areas closer to the continents?
Oceanic plates collide at this location
, making submarine mountains c. Newly formed crust at this location is much hotter than older crust d.
Which of the two ridges has the deepest and longest Rift Valley?
The Mid-Atlantic Ridge
includes a deep rift valley that runs along the axis of the ridge along nearly its entire length.
