Abstract
The continental margin off northeastern Taiwan consists of five major physiographic units which are the East China Sea continental shelf, the East China Sea continental slope, the Southern Okinawa Trough, the Ilan continental shelf and the Ilan Ridge. This physiographic framework is provisional and may be revised if better physiographic names are proposed. The East China Sea continental shelf is relatively wide with a smooth surface marked locally by low-relief features resulting from sea-level fluctuation during the late Pleistocene and by volcanic activities of the back-arc rifting. The East China Sea continental slope varies laterally in slope gradient and topography. The continental slope is marked is marked by a variety of slumping of sliding scars, erosional gullies, and debris flow deposits of turbidites. The submarine canyons are another prominent topographic feature occurring on the slope. The submarine canyons indent the continental shelf and modify the linear shelf-slope transtition region in to an irregular shape. The western end of the Southern Okinawa Trough has curvelinear bathymetric contours at the maximum depth of about 2,000m. The trough is mainly confined by the continental slope to the north and by sloper off the Ryukyu volcanic islands.
Highlights
The East China Sea is one of the marginal seas along the rim of the western Pacific
This study is a geological part of the joint research project of Kuroshio edge exchange processes (KEEP) which is an integrated research of marine sciences including physical oceanography, marine chemistry, biology, and geology sponsored by the National Science Council of Taiwan (Chu, 1989)
We suggest that the boundary between the East China Sea slope and the Southern Okinawa Trough at the 1OOOm isobath because this paper is mainly concerned with the physiography along the continental margin of northeast Taiwan rather than the structure of the Okinawa Trough
Summary
The East China Sea is one of the marginal seas along the rim of the western Pacific. The Ryukyu islands are the eastern boundary of the East China Sea (Figure 1). It covers an area of about 770,000 square km ar..d has an elongated shape trending northeast-southwest. It has been noted that off the eastern and northeastern coast of Taiwan,the Kuroshio Current flows northeasterly along the shelf edge towards Japan (Figure 2). The importance of shelf edge exchange processes of the Kuroshio Current flowing along the segment off northeast Taiwan has been recognized in recent years, especially the significance of water-mass exchange between the Kuroshio Current and the East China Sea (Chu, 1976).
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