Submarine canyon

A submarine canyon (also submarine canyon ) is a steep valley on the ocean floor in the area of the continental shelf. Submarine canyons are typically found as an extension of large rivers. They can be very large, for example, ranges the Congo Canyon to 1200 meters below the sea level and it reaches 800 km far out into the sea.

Characteristics

Submarine canyons are more often found on steep slopes than on flat sea. Show erosion through all the layers of not yet fossilized sediment up to the crystalline rock. The walls are typically very steep. The walls themselves are showing signs of erosion.

Formation of submarine canyons

There are two proposed mechanisms, such as submarine canyons may arise which may have also worked together:

• The canyons may have been eroded at a time when the sea level was lower and the rivers are further out flowed into the present-day shelf area. This theory has the problem that the sea level would have located 1000 m deep in this case. In the canyons from the mouths of the rivers to the Mediterranean meets the (see Messinian salinity crisis ).
• Perhaps these canyons for example, were by suspension currents generated (dense, sediment- charged flows), be triggered by an earthquake and the flow down the continental slope.

• Valley Type