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The heterogeneous abyss

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  • Journal Title:
    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
  • Personal Author:
    Smith, Craig R.
  • NOAA Program & Office:
  • Description:
    The abyssal seafloor, that is, ocean depths of∼3,000 to 6,000 m, is widely considered simply to bevast, featureless plains of sediment. For example,Wikipedia asserts that“abyssal plains cover more than50% of the Earth’s surface”and“are among the flat-test, smoothest, and least explored regions on Earth”(1). Featureless tracts of mud make intuitive sensesince abyssal plains are formed by the deposition ofthick blankets of fine-grained sediments sinking fromthe surface ocean or transported as turbidity currentsdown continental margins. In most of the abyss, espe-cially on seafloors>10 My old, this sediment blanket istens to thousands of meters thick (2) and seems likelyto bury or smoothen most of the irregularities in sea-floor crust (e.g., basalt pillows) formed at midoceanspreading centers. Riehl et al. in PNAS (3) help todispel this notion that the abyssal seafloor is feature-less, providing evidence of extensive rocky habitatsalong transform faults in the abyss.
  • Keywords:
  • Source:
    PNAS 117 (29) 16729-16731 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2010215117
  • DOI:
  • Pubmed ID:
    32651274
  • Pubmed Central ID:
    PMC7382280
  • Document Type:
    Journal Article
  • Rights Information:
    Other
  • Compliance:
    PMC
  • Main Document Checksum:
    urn:sha256:f6dfec975ce3175f61007bd8593c8130c323d16a41858f847cb7f4d080753095
  • Download URL:
  • File Type:
    Filetype[PDF - 560.01 KB ]
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