Where are the mid-ocean ridges?

Where are the mid-ocean ridges?

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.

What are mid-ocean ridges and what happens there?

A mid-ocean ridge or mid-oceanic ridge is an underwater mountain range, formed by plate tectonics. This uplifting of the ocean floor occurs when convection currents rise in the mantle beneath the oceanic crust and create magma where two tectonic plates meet at a divergent boundary.

What are mid-ocean ridges and why are they important?

Mid-ocean ridges are geologically important because they occur along the kind of plate boundary where new ocean floor is created as the plates spread apart. Thus the mid-ocean ridge is also known as a “spreading center” or a “divergent plate boundary.” The plates spread apart at rates of 1 cm to 20 cm per year.

What causes the formation of mid-ocean ridges?

The mid-ocean ridge is a continuous range of undersea volcanic mountains that encircles the globe almost entirely underwater. It formed and evolves as a result of spreading in Earth’s lithosphere—the crust and upper mantle—at the divergent boundaries between tectonic plates.

What are examples of mid-ocean ridges?

Mid-ocean ridges are typically half a mile to six miles wide and over a mile underwater. Two of the most well-known mid-ocean ridges are the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and the East Pacific Rise. As you might guess, most of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge is in the Atlantic, and most of the East Pacific Rise is in the Pacific.

What is an example of ocean ridges?

This ridge system includes the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, Mid-Indian Ocean Ridge, Carlsberg Ridge, Pacific-Antarctic Ridge, and the East Pacific Rise with its related features, including the Chile Rise, Galapagos Rift Zone, Gorda Rise, and Juan de Fuca Ridge.

What can you find at mid ocean ridges?

The mid-ocean ridge is a continuous chain of volcanoes on the ocean floor where lava erupts and the crust of the Earth is created. Nearly every day, somewhere on the crest of the mid-ocean ridge, there is likely to be an eruption of lava or an intrusion of magma that builds the ocean crust.

What is an example of a mid-ocean ridge?

The most prominent examples of the mid-oceanic ridge transform zones are in the Atlantic Ocean between South America and Africa. Known as the St. Paul, Romanche, Chain, and Ascension fracture zones, these areas have deep, easily identifiable transform faults and ridges.

What are the names of mid ocean ridges around the world?

List of mid-ocean ridges Aden Ridge – Part of an active oblique rift system in the Gulf of Aden, between Somalia and the Arabian Peninsula Cocos Ridge Explorer Ridge – mid-ocean ridge west of British Columbia, Canada Galapagos Spreading Center – an east-west trending mid-ocean ridge east of the eponymous islands between the Nazca and Cocos plates

What is happening at the mid-ocean ridges?

Mid-ocean ridges exhibit active volcanism and seismicity. The oceanic crust is in a constant state of ‘renewal’ at the mid-ocean ridges by the processes of seafloor spreading and plate tectonics. New magma steadily emerges onto the ocean floor and intrudes into the existing ocean crust at and near rifts along the ridge axes.