Ocean Birth and Death

Plate Tectonics in Gros Morne

Karalyn Brennan
Katie-Marie Brown
The Birth of the Oceans
The cooling of the Earth to the point where the gaseous
components were held in the atmosphere at sufficient
pressure for the retention of liquid water
There are 3 main theories of how water came to be on Earth:
Ice Chunk Theory - The earth was formed of ice chunks (H2O
~ 0.1-0.5%) from space coming together
Volcanic Theory - The earth’s mantle is made of molten rock
containing gas that is up to 70% water vapor that escapes daily
Meteor Theory – There are meteors containing water
constantly entering the Earth’s atmosphere, and constantly
adding more water
Ocean “Death”
Zone with extremely high productivity can become “dead”
or hyper-eutrophic, meaning there is excessive nutrients,
very high productivity, and hypoxic or anoxic conditions
Algal blooms are very common in these zones, and
trophic interactions are phytoplankton driven
Can be cloudy as pea soup (and smelly!) with <1m clarity,
so cannot support fish, and even some plants are out-
competed for sunlight by phytoplankton
This is a condition that can be caused by pollution, such
as farm run-off
The Hydrological Cycle
Just like on Magic School Bus!
Tectonic Plates
The lithosphere is made of 12-15 total plates of land on
the Earth
Continental plates are made mostly of granite, while
Oceanic plates are made of much heavier oceanic
basalt
Pangea
250 million years ago, all the continents were one
“super-continent” called Pangea, with a single giant
ocean called Panthalassa
Tectonic plate movements caused stress fractures in
the giant continent, and this allowed magma to rise
and begin pushing plates apart
About 175 million years ago, Pangea began to break up,
and the separate continents and oceans we know today
began to form
Plate Margins
Convergent – Mountains, oceanic trenches
Divergent – Volcanoes, oceanic ridges
Transverse – Earthquakes
Gros Morne Plate Tectonics
Eastern Canada is on a trailing edge coast, meaning
the plate is moving west, so the continental shelf is
long and shallow
600 million years ago, North America and Europe
were joined. When they split, magma welled up along
the coast of North America causing cliffs, mountains,
and oceanic mantle rock formations
Gros Morne Glacial Activity
Alpine galciers are large long-lasting masses of ice that
are formed in mountain valleys and move down acting
as EXTREMELY slow moving rivers, causing erosion
Over time, the mountains formed were eroded,
causing the table tops we see today
Gros Morne is also rich in fjords, which are deep
underwater valley inlets characterized by U-shaped
basins
They are carved by glaciers, and are blocked by sills of
glacial debris runoff at the mouth
Other Resources
Ocean Birth:
http://www.cbc.ca/oneocean/video.html?clipID=1431659624
Plate Tectonics:
http://www.google.ca/imgres?
imgurl=http://oceansjsu.com/images/exp5_plate_boundaries_sm.gif&i
mgrefurl=http://oceansjsu.com/105d/exped_birth/5.html&usg=__ho8e
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sig2=Q5iNbpsPBgNv8Dpcjz4Rhw&zoom=1&tbnid=RAMm914jZIJZVM:
&tbnh=101&tbnw=187&ei=JILITYiPBaHV0QG2q72_CA&prev=/search
%3Fq%3Dplate%2Bboundary%2Bcharacteristics%26um%3D1%26hl
%3Den%26sa%3DN%26biw%3D1362%26bih%3D583%26tbm
%3Disch&um=1&itbs=1&iact=rc&dur=671&page=1&ndsp=18&ved=1t:429,
r:14,s:0&tx=114&ty=62
References
Condie, K. 1989. Plate Tectonics and Crustal Evollution, 3rd
Ed. Pergamon Press
van Waterschoot van der Gracht, W., et al. 1928. Theory of
Continental Drift: a Symposium of the Origins and
Movements of Land-massesof both intercontinental and
intracontinental, as proposed by Alfred Wegener. Thomas
Murby & Co.; Tulsa
Shepard, F. P. 1973. Submarine Geology, 3rd Ed. Pages 88-90
Encyclopedia Brittanica
Australia and New Zealand Environment and Conservation
Counsel