What is a deep ocean trench simple definition?

What is a deep ocean trench simple definition?

Ocean trenches are steep depressions in the deepest parts of the ocean [where old ocean crust from one tectonic plate is pushed beneath another plate, raising mountains, causing earthquakes, and forming volcanoes on the seafloor and on land.

What do trenches reveal about the ocean floor?

Oceanic trenches are a feature of the Earth’s distinctive plate tectonics. They mark the locations 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.

What is an ocean trench give an example?

Ocean trenches exist in all the world’s oceans. They include the Philippine Trench, Tonga Trench, the South Sandwich Trench, the Eurasian Basin and Malloy Deep, the Diamantina Trench, the Puerto Rican Trench, and the Mariana. That action cracked Earth’s surface and the resulting fracture zone became the trench.

What is the purpose of ocean trenches?

The oceanic trenches are hemispheric-scale long but narrow topographic depressions of the sea floor. They also are the deepest parts of the ocean floor. Trenches define one of the most important natural boundaries on the Earth’s solid surface, that between two lithospheric plates.

What is the definition of an oceanic trench?

› Oceanic trench is a deep section of the ocean usually where an oceanic plate is sinking below a continental plate. › Continents can tuck under each other just like one piece of paper can tuck under another, in a process called subduction. › Ocean trenches are natural tectonic plate boundaries between two crustal plates.

Where does the denser Plate subduct in the ocean trench?

This place where the denser plate subducts is called a subduction zone. Oceanic subduction zones almost always feature a small hillpreceding the ocean trench itself. This hill, called the outer trench swell, marks the region where the subducting plate begins to buckleand fall beneath the more buoyantplate.

How is the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean formed?

The Mariana Trench, in the South Pacific Ocean, is formed as the mighty Pacific plate subducts beneath the smaller, less-dense Philippine plate. In a subduction zone, some of the molten material—the former seafloor—can rise through volcanoes located near the trench.

Which is the deepest trench in the world?

› The greatest ocean depth measured is in the Challenger Deep of the Mariana Trench, at a depth of 11,034 m (36,201 ft) below sea level. Oceanic lithosphere moves into trenches at a global rate of about 3 km2/yr. The Mariana Trench or Marianas Trench is the deepest part of the world’s oceans.