{"id":1676,"date":"2015-04-29T11:32:00","date_gmt":"2015-04-29T11:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bluehabitats.org\/?page_id=1676"},"modified":"2015-05-05T06:51:31","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T06:51:31","slug":"rift-valleys","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/bluehabitats.org\/?page_id=1676","title":{"rendered":"Rift Valleys"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Rift valleys<\/em> \u2013 Rift valleys are confined to the central axis of mid-ocean spreading ridges; they are elongate, local depressions flanked generally on both sides by spreading ridges (Macdonald, 2001). \u00a0Rift valleys cover the largest fraction of abyssal zone in the Arctic Ocean, where they characterise 0.622% of that area.\u00a0 The greatest total area of rift valleys occurs in the Indian Ocean where they cover 165,220 km2<\/sup>.<\/p>\n

Harris et al. (2014) mapped 658 separate rift valley segments, found mainly along mid-ocean ridges, covering an area of 710,060 km2<\/sup>. Segmentation of the rift valley, due to transform faults and other factors (Macdonald, 2001), is manifest as a greater number of smaller-sized segments in the Indian, North Pacific and South Pacific Oceans, compared with the Arctic, North Atlantic and South Atlantic Oceans, where rift valleys are fewer in number (less segmented) and much greater in size than the global average (Table). Earth\u2019s largest mid-ocean rift valleys occur in the Atlantic Ocean and they are up to 21,390 km2<\/sup> in area, compared with the global mean size of only 1,080 km2<\/sup> (see Table), although, as noted above, the Indian Ocean contains the largest absolute area of rift valleys.<\/p>\n

Harris et al. (2014) used the EarthByte (M\u00fcller et al., 1997) database on mid-ocean ridge spreading rates to assign a mean spreading rate to each of the 658 rift valley segments and to then estimate a mean rift valley segment size and spreading rate for each major ocean region.\u00a0 The results (see Figure) demonstrate that larger rift valley segments are generally associated with slow-spreading rates and smaller rift valley segments are associated with fast spreading.\u00a0 The relationship appears to generally hold true but is complicated by other factors that include crustal thickness, the development of fracture zones and patterns of upwelling magma (Macdonald, 2001).\u00a0 The data indicate that Order 3 rift valley segments (as per Macdonald, 2001) are the most abundant, although the 1 km bathymetric grid size used is too coarse to resolve Order 4 rift valley segments.<\/p>\n

For a discussion of the biota of rift valleys, see \u201cSpreading Ridges<\/em>\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Statistics on Rift valleys (from Harris et al., 2014). Spreading rate (\u00b1 standard deviation) is from the EarthByte database (M\u00fcller et al., 1997), with average values calculated for each spreading ridge segment.<\/p>\n\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n

[vc_table vc_table_theme=”classic_blue” allow_html=””]Ocean,Area%20km2,Rift%20valley%20area%25,Number%20of%20rift%20valley%20segments,Number%20of%20mid-ocean%20ridge%20segments,Average%20area%20of%20rift%20valley%20segments%20km2,Spreading%20rate%20mm%2Fyr|Arctic%20Ocean,33%2C270,0.256,22,5,1%2C510,7.4%20%C2%B1%203.8|Indian%20Ocean,165%2C220,0.232,155,34,1%2C070,25.0%20%C2%B1%2017.6|Mediterranean%20%26%20Black%20Sea%20,0,0,0,0,0,|North%20Atlantic%20,108%2C110,0.241,37,5,2%2C920,15.5%20%C2%B1%208.8|North%20Pacific%20,102%2C140,0.125,118,24,870,43.2%20%C2%B1%2029.4|South%20Atlantic,118%2C690,0.293,71,9,1%2C670,22.0%20%C2%B1%2012.7|South%20Pacific%20,156%2C220,0.179,228,30,690,62.9%20%C2%B1%2031.0|Southern%20Ocean,26%2C420,0.130,34,9,780,30.6%20%C2%B1%2015.8|All%20Oceans,710%2C060,0.196,658,106,1%2C080,[\/vc_table]\n\t
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Graphs showing: A). Mean rift valley area versus EarthByte modeled seafloor spreading rate (Muller et al., 1997); ellipses of mean and standard deviation for major ocean regions illustrate that Atlantic rift valley segments are larger and slower-spreading than Pacific segments.\u00a0 B). Histogram of rift valley segments classified by length, mapped in the present study, with Order length categories after Macdonald (2001).\u00a0 Order 4 rift valley segments (scaled to <10 km length) are poorly resolved in the present study..<\/p>\n\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

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Mean rift valley area versus EarthByte modeled seafloor spreading rate<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>
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Histogram of rift valley segments classified by length, mapped in the present study, with Order length categories after Macdonald (2001).<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>
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References<\/h5>\n

Harris, P.T., MacMillan-Lawler, M., Rupp, J., Baker, E.K., 2014. Geomorphology of the oceans. Marine Geology 352, 4-24.<\/p>\n

IHO, 2008. Standardization of Undersea Feature Names: Guidelines Proposal form Terminology, 4th ed. International Hydrographic Organisation and Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, Monaco, p. 32. http:\/\/www.iho.int\/iho_pubs\/bathy\/B-6_e4_EF_Nov08.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n

Kennett, J., 1982. Marine Geology. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.<\/p>\n

Macdonald, K.C., 2001. Mid-ocean ridge tectonics, volcanism and geomorphology, Encyclopedia of Ocean Sciences. Elsevier Ltd., pp. 1798\u20131813.<\/p>\n

M\u00fcller, R.D., Roest, W.R., Royer, J.Y., Gahagan, L.M., Sclater, J.G., 1997. Digital Isochrons of the World’s Ocean Floor. Journal of Geophysical Research 102, 3211-3214.<\/p>\n\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rift valleys \u2013 Rift valleys are confined to the central axis of mid-ocean spreading ridges; they are elongate, local depressions flanked generally on both sides by spreading ridges (Macdonald, 2001). \u00a0Rift valleys cover the largest fraction of abyssal zone in the Arctic Ocean, where they characterise 0.622% of that area.\u00a0 The greatest total area of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"parent":1646,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1676","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","description-off"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluehabitats.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluehabitats.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluehabitats.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluehabitats.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluehabitats.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1676"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/bluehabitats.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1676\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1819,"href":"https:\/\/bluehabitats.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1676\/revisions\/1819"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluehabitats.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluehabitats.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}