Marine Sediments Chapter 5 Summary

Chapter 5 explains different kinds of sediments, their origin, color and its contents. For example, biological sediments are white or cream color. Deep-sea clays are ranging from red to chocolate brown color because of the oxidation or rusting of iron within the sediments to form “iron oxide” which is basically rust and nodular sediments are dark brown and black. However boulders, cobbles, and pebbles made of better-quality particles which is sand, silt, and clay and they are defined by particle size. The sediments, like the rain, slowly dusted on the oceanic floor, however, rates are ranging from a few centimeters a year to a thickness of a dime every thousand of years. Except for the spreading centers, nearly all of the ocean floor is covered …show more content…
And finally, cosmogenous sediments like tektite spheres and glassy nodules is the dust from space like meteorites and other space debris also 1% on the ocean floor. Most marine sediments are covering continental slopes (41% in volume) and continental rises (31% in volume). Continental shelves have only 15 percent and the deep ocean floors only 13 percent in volume. Another sort of sediments are pelagic sediments which are fine-grained and settled far from land, for example, siliceous oozes, calcareous oozes, and red clays. Lithogenous sediments consists of rock and minerals are also found far from shore, however, it is used interchangeably with terrigenous sediments. Pelagic sediments are slow-accumulating deposits at the average rate about 1 millimeter per 1000 years because these sediments accumulated from atmospheric dust like micrometeorites, volcanic ash and other dust that comes from the land. Scientists use sediment samples to dig deeper into a history of the ocean and the Earth, but due to tectonic activity the history age is not