JDM 558E - The Sea Floor

Course Objectives

We aim to provide introductory geology and oceanography and environmental sciences, one needs a summary of the tectonics and morphology of the sea floor, of the geologic processes active in the deep sea and in shelf seas, and of the climatic record in deep-sea sediments.

Course Description

Man’s understanding of how this planet is put together and how it evolved has changed radically during the last 30 years. This great revolution in geology – now usually subsumed under the concept of Plate Tectonics – brought the realization that convection within the Earth is responsible for the origin of today’s ocean basins and continents, and that the grand features of the Earth’s surface are the product of ongoing large-scale horizontal motions. Some of these notions were put forward earlier in this century. In what follows, we shall first give a brief overview of the effects of endogenic forces on the morphology of the sea floor. Several excellent summaries for the general reader are available for this topic, which is closely linked to the theory of continental drift, and has been a focus of geologic discussion for the last three decades. For the rest, we shall emphasize the exogenic processes, which determine the physical, chemical, and biological environment on the sea floor, and which are especially relevant to the intelligent use of the ocean and to an understanding of its role in the evolution of climate and life.