Ocean Floor Trench Facts

Learn facts about oceanic trench for kids.

Ocean floor trench facts. Ocean trenches are typically caused when an oceanic crustal plate slides under a lighter continental plate or another oceanic plate. Oceanic trenches are a distinctive morphological feature of convergent plate boundaries along which lithospheric plates move towards each other at rates that vary from a few millimeters to over ten centimeters per year. Here are 15 crazy facts about the ocean floor. Finally you would ascend tens of thousands of feet back up the continental slope and across the continental shelf.

The deepest ocean depth to be sounded is in the challenger deep of the mariana trench. Most volcanism associated with trench occurs on the continent and not on the seafloor. We know very little about the deep ocean floor and the life it holds due to the depth and the difficulties this creates for scientists. These plates slowly move toward each other at distances that range from a few millimeters per year to more than 10 centimeters.

An oceanic trench is a long and narrow depression in the ocean floor. The mariana trench for example is the deepest place in the ocean at 36 201 feet. Trenches are active with earthquakes and resulting tsunamis. Oceanic trenches typically extend 3 to 4 km 1 9 to 2 5 mi below the level of the surrounding oceanic floor.

These oceanographic features are the deepest parts of the ocean floor. Ocean trenches formed by this continental oceanic boundary are asymmetrical. Ocean trenches have relatively steep sides falling to the ocean floor. In fact it has been said that we know more about the surface of the moon than about the deeper ocean trenches.

On the inner slope continental side the trench walls are much more steep. However many of the ocean s volcanic islands and seamounts are found in what are called island arcs bending chains of islands rising from the sea floor usually paralleling the concave edges of. After scaling the mid ocean ridge and traversing hundreds to thousands of miles of abyssal plains you might encounter an ocean trench. These trenches are considered the deepest part of the ocean floor occurring at the boundary between convergent plates and lithospheric plates.

It is believed to work by density where one plate slides under another this is called subduction as the heavier plate descends the long narrow. On a trench s outer slope the oceanic side the slope is gentle as the plate gradually bends into the trench. Oceanic trenches are topographic depressions of the sea floor relatively narrow in width but very long.