Shelves

The continental shelf is the extended perimeter of each continent, which is covered during interglacial periods such as the current epoch by relatively shallow seas (known as shelf seas) and gulfs. more...

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The shelf usually ends at a point of increasing slope (called the shelf break). The sea floor below the break is the continental slope. Below the slope is the continental rise, which finally merges into the deep ocean floor, the abyssal plain. As the continental shelf and the slope are part of the continental margin, both are covered in this article.

Structure

The width of the continental shelf varies significantly. It is common for an area to have virtually no shelf at all, especially where the forward edge of an advancing oceanic plate dives beneath continental crust in an offshore subduction zone such as off the coasts of Chile or the west coast of Sumatra. The largest shelf—the Siberian shelf in the Arctic Ocean—stretches to 1500 kilometers in width. The South China Sea lies over another extensive area of continental shelf, the Sunda shelf, which joins Borneo, Sumatra, and Java to the Asian mainland. Other familiar bodies of water that overlie continental shelves are the North Sea and the Persian Gulf. The average width of continental shelves is about 80 kilometers. The depth of the shelf also varies, but is generally limited to water shallower than 150 m.(Pinet 37) The slope of the shelf is usually quite low, on the order of 0.5°; vertical relief is also minimal, at less than 20 m.(Pinet 36-37)

Though the continental shelf is treated as a physiographic province of the ocean, it is not part of the deep ocean basin proper, but the flooded margins of the continent.(Pinet 35-36) Passive continental margins such as most of the Atlantic coasts have wide and shallow shelves, comprised of thick sedimentary wedges derived from long erosion of a neighboring continent. Active continental margins have narrow, relatively steep shelves, due to frequent earthquakes that move sediment to the deep sea.(Pinet 90-93)

Shelf break

The character of the shelf changes dramatically at the shelf break, where the continental slope begins. With a few exceptions, the shelf break is located at a remarkably uniform depth of roughly 140 m; this is likely a hallmark of past ice ages, when sea level was lower than it is now.(Gross 43)

Continental slope and rise

The continental slope is much steeper than the shelf; the average angle is 3°, but it can be as low as 1° or as high as 10°.(Pinet 36, Gross 43) The slope is often cut with submarine canyons, features whose origin was mysterious for many years.(Pinet 98, Gross 44)

The continental rise is below the slope, but landward of the abyssal plains. Its gradient is intermediate between the slope and the shelf, on the order of 0.5-1°.(Pinet 37) Extending as far as 500 km from the slope, it consists of thick sediments deposited by turbidity currents from the shelf and slope.(Pinet 39, Gross 45)

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