What caused the Gakkel Ridge?
The Gakkel ridge extends about 1800 kilometers beneath the Arctic Ocean from north of Greenland to Siberia. It is the northernmost portion of the mid-ocean ridge system, the global 75,000 kilometer long volcanic chain where the ocean crust is generated by erupting magma.
What kind of boundary is the Gakkel Ridge?
divergent tectonic plate boundary
The Gakkel Ridge (formerly known as the Nansen Cordillera and Arctic Mid-Ocean Ridge) is a mid-oceanic ridge, a divergent tectonic plate boundary between the North American Plate and the Eurasian Plate.
What is the Arctic ridge?
THE Mid-Oceanic Ridge, a broad fractured arch more than 40,000 miles long, is the largest tectonic feature on the surface of the Earth. The Arctic Mid-Oceanic Ridge does not bisect the entire Arctic Basin but lies midway between the monolithic, aseismic Lomonosov Ridge and the Eurasian continental margin.
How was the Gakkel Ridge discovered?
A sonar survey along the ultraslow-spreading Gakkel Ridge by the USS Hawkbill submarine revealed two previously undiscovered volcanoes beneath the pack ice of the Arctic Ocean.
Are 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.
Is there a Mid Pacific ridge?
The East Pacific Rise is a mid-oceanic ridge, a divergent tectonic plate boundary located along the floor of the Pacific Ocean. It separates the Pacific Plate to the west from (north to south) the North American Plate, the Rivera Plate, the Cocos Plate, the Nazca Plate, and the Antarctic Plate.
Do divergent plate boundaries create volcanoes?
Volcanoes are most common in these geologically active boundaries. The two types of plate boundaries that are most likely to produce volcanic activity are divergent plate boundaries and convergent plate boundaries. At a divergent boundary, tectonic plates move apart from one another.
What type of plate boundary formed Iceland?
divergent plate boundary
Iceland lies on the Mid Atlantic Ridge, a divergent plate boundary where the North American Plate and the Eurasian Plate are moving away from each other.
Where is the Arctic ridge?
Lomonosov Ridge, major submarine ridge of the Arctic Ocean. The ridge is 1,100 miles (1,800 km) long. From Ellesmere Island on the continental shelf of North America, the ridge extends north to a point near the North Pole and then continues south to a point near the continental shelf of the New Siberian Islands.
Why is the Atlantic ridge different from a trench?
So the ridge is a ridge, not a trench, but the rift valley along its length is not a trench either, but a graben: it has been formed by tectonic plates moving away from each other and parts of the separating ridge breaking off its edge and sinking into the rift.
What is a mid-ocean ridge simple definition?
The mid-ocean ridge is the most extensive chain of mountains on Earth, stretching nearly 65,000 kilometers (40,390 miles) and with more than 90 percent of the mountain range lying in the deep ocean. The ridge system forms the longest and largest mountain range on Earth, winding its way between the continents.
What are some examples of mid-ocean ridges?
List of mid-ocean ridges
- Kolbeinsey Ridge – Segment of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge north of Iceland in the Arctic Ocean.
- Mohns Ridge.
- Knipovich Ridge (between Greenland and Spitsbergen)
- Reykjanes Ridge (south of Iceland)