Saturday, July 11, 2009

Continental shelf


where is continental shelf? what is continental shelf?, where it starts and where it ends, so we have lot of questions about continental shelf, lte we see about continental shelf and nature of continental shelf, species living in, and etc., first we see about different definitions for continental shelf


  • The continental shelf is an undersea extension which can stretch for many miles out to the sea in some cases. Many nations have asserted mineral and land rights to their associated continental shelves, since this region of the ocean is rich in natural resources such as marine life.

  • There are actually several parts to the continental shelf. The first part is the shelfitself, which starts below the shoreline of a continent. The shelf slopes gently as it stretches towards the deeper part of the ocean, until it reaches a certain point and drops off sharply, causing the waters above to rapidly become much deeper. This drop is called thecontinental break, and it occurs uniformly at around 460 feet (140 meters) of depth.t has been theorized that the continental break may mark the former sea level of the world's oceans.

  • the continental shelf, a shallow submarine platform at the edge of a continent inclines very gently seaward, generally at an angle 0.1 degeree.Continental shelves vary in width.on the pacific coast of north America the shelf is only a few kilometers wide. On the Pacific off Newfoundland in the Atlantic ocean it is about 500 kilometers.portions of the shelves in the Arctic Ocean off siberia and northern Europe are even wider. Water depth over a continental shelf tends to increase regularly away from land, with the outer edge of the shelf being about 100 to 200 meters below sea level.

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