Earth:Mid-Atlantic Ridge

Short description: A divergent tectonic plate boundary that in the North Atlantic separates the Eurasian and North American plates, and in the South Atlantic separates the African and South American plates

A map of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge

The Mid-Atlantic Ridge (MAR) is a mid-ocean ridge, a divergent tectonic plate or constructive plate boundary located along the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, and part of the longest mountain range in the world. In the North Atlantic it separates the Eurasian and North American plates, and in the South Atlantic it separates the African and South American plates. The ridge extends from a junction with the Gakkel Ridge (Mid-Arctic Ridge) northeast of Greenland southward to the Bouvet Triple Junction in the South Atlantic. Although the Mid-Atlantic Ridge is mostly an underwater feature, portions of it have enough elevation to extend above sea level. The section of the ridge that includes Iceland is known as the Reykjanes Ridge. The ridge has an average spreading rate of about 2.5 centimetres (0.98 in) per year.

Discovery

Pangaea's separation animated

A ridge under the Atlantic Ocean was first inferred by Matthew Fontaine Maury in 1850. The existence of the ridge was discovered during the expedition of HMS Challenger in 1872. A team of scientists on board, led by Charles Wyville Thomson, discovered a large rise in the middle of the Atlantic while investigating the future location for a transatlantic telegraph cable. The existence of such a ridge was confirmed by sonar in 1925 and was found to extend around the Cape of Good Hope into the Indian Ocean by the German Meteor expedition.

In the 1950s, mapping of the Earth's ocean floors by Bruce Heezen, Maurice Ewing, Marie Tharp and others revealed that the Mid-Atlantic Ridge had a strange bathymetry of valleys and ridges, with its central valley being seismologically active and the epicenter of many earthquakes. Ewing, Heezen and Tharp discovered that the ridge is part of a 40,000-km-long essentially continuous system of mid-ocean ridges on the floors of all the Earth’s oceans. The discovery of this worldwide ridge system led to the theory of seafloor spreading and general acceptance of Wegener's theory of continental drift and expansion in the modified form of plate tectonics. The ridge is central to the breakup of the hypothetical supercontinent of Pangaea that began some 180 million years ago.

Notable features

In Iceland the Mid-Atlantic Ridge passes across the Þingvellir National Park, a popular destination for tourists

The Mid-Atlantic Ridge includes a deep rift valley that runs along the axis of the ridge along nearly its entire length. This rift marks the actual boundary between adjacent tectonic plates, where magma from the mantle reaches the seafloor, erupting as lava and producing new crustal material for the plates.

Near the equator, the Mid-Atlantic Ridge is divided into the North Atlantic Ridge and the South Atlantic Ridge by the Romanche Trench, a narrow submarine trench with a maximum depth of 7,758 m (25,453 ft), one of the deepest locations of the Atlantic Ocean. This trench, however, is not regarded as the boundary between the North and South American Plates, nor the Eurasian and African Plates.

Islands

The islands on or near the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, from north to south, with their respective highest peaks and location, are:

Northern Hemisphere (North Atlantic Ridge):

1. Jan Mayen (Beerenberg, 2277 m (at [ ⚑ ] 71°06′N 08°12′W), in the Arctic Ocean
2. Iceland (Hvannadalshnúkur at Vatnajökull, 2109.6 m (at [ ⚑ ] 64°01′N 16°41′W), through which the ridge runs
3. Azores (Ponta do Pico or Pico Alto, on Pico Island, 2351 m, (at [ ⚑ ] 38°28′0″N 28°24′0″W)
4. Saint Peter and Paul Rocks (Southwest Rock, 22.5 m, at [ ⚑ ] 00°55′08″N 29°20′35″W)

Southern Hemisphere (South Atlantic Ridge):

1. Ascension Island (The Peak, Green Mountain, 859 m, at [ ⚑ ] 07°59′S 14°25′W)
2. Saint Helena (Diana's Peak, 818 m at [ ⚑ ] 15°57′S 5°41′W)
3. Tristan da Cunha (Queen Mary's Peak, 2062 m, at [ ⚑ ] 37°05′S 12°17′W)
4. Gough Island (Edinburgh Peak, 909 m, at [ ⚑ ] 40°20′S 10°00′W)
5. Bouvet Island (Olavtoppen, 780 m, at [ ⚑ ] 54°24′S 03°21′E)

Geology

Basaltic rocks of the MAR collected by the Hercules ROV during the 2005 Lost City Expedition.

For a general explanation of mid-oceanic ridges, see mid-oceanic ridge and seafloor spreading

The ridge sits atop a geologic feature known as the Mid-Atlantic Rise, which is a progressive bulge that runs the length of the Atlantic Ocean, with the ridge resting on the highest point of this linear bulge. This bulge is thought to be caused by upward convective forces in the asthenosphere pushing the oceanic crust and lithosphere. This divergent boundary first formed in the Triassic period, when a series of three-armed grabens coalesced on the supercontinent Pangaea to form the ridge. Usually, only two arms of any given three-armed graben become part of a divergent plate boundary. The failed arms are called aulacogens, and the aulacogens of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge eventually became many of the large river valleys seen along the Americas and Africa (including the Mississippi River, Amazon River and Niger River). The Fundy Basin on the Atlantic coast of North America between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia in Canada is evidence of the ancestral Mid-Atlantic Ridge.

See also

• Atlantis Massif
• Central Atlantic Magmatic Province
• Fifteen-Twenty Fracture Zone

Bibliography

• Evans, Rachel. "Plumbing Depths to Reach New Heights: Marie Tharp Explains Marine Geological Maps." The Library of Congress Information Bulletin. November 2002.

External links

• MAR-ECO, a Census of Marine Life project on life along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge