Abstract
The study presents the insights of the tectonic development and geological settings of the Atlantic Ocean supported by cartographic visualization in Generic Mapping Tools (GMT). The aim is to study geologic situation and trends in the tectonic development of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and Atlantic Ocean seafloor. The objective is to find out impact of various factors (such as volcanic, tectonic, hydrothermal and sedimentary processes) that sculpt seafloor geomorphology, and correlation between early history of crust formation, geological processes and present submarine landforms. Other assignments in this work refer to mutual comparison of raster grids on sedimentation, topography, geology, seafloor fabric and highlighting similarities among the landforms and sediment thickness. Asymmetry in crustal accretion is explained by the tectonic history of the lithosphere formation. Correlation between plate subduction and development of the submarine landforms is explained by the Earth's crust extension resulting in formation of cracks, elongations, faults, rifts. Ocean seafloor geomorphology is shaped by a variety of factors that impact its form at different scales. These drivers (tectonic evolution, oceanic currents, hydrology, sedimentation) have effects on geomorphic landforms of the seafloor in context of historic geological development and during Quaternary. Technical part of this work was performed by GMT scripting toolset with all maps plotted in American polyconic projection. The results are received by overlay, cartographic analysis and synthesis of the multi-source geodata through mapping and interpreting grids (ETOPO1, EGM96, GlobSed, crustal age). This work contributes to expand the knowledge on geological and tectonic development of the Atlantic Ocean seabed in order to complete the view of its submarine geomorphology
Highlights
The study focuses on the insights of the tectonic development and geological settings of the Atlantic Ocean (Fig. 1)
The purpose of this study was to demonstrate the application of the cartographic scripting toolset Generic Mapping Tools (GMT) for processing high resolution datasets of the Atlantic Ocean seafloor
Printing quality maps based on high resolution grids enables to highlight correlation between the geological phenomena with topographic setting which reflects the tectonic evolution of the seafloor
Summary
The study focuses on the insights of the tectonic development and geological settings of the Atlantic Ocean (Fig. 1). The most notable morphological structure of the Atlantic seafloor is its mid-ocean ridge, which stretches along the entire Atlantic Ocean. The Mid-Atlantic Ridge (further: MAR) separates two zones of deep-sea basins in the Atlantic Ocean, bordering continental blocks through the systems of troughs [28]. It begins in the Eurasian part of the Arctic Ocean from the Gakkel Ridge, stretches southwest through the NorwegianGreenland basin and continues across the entire Atlantic Ocean about halfway between the shores of North and South America on the one hand, Europe and Africa on the other. The structure of the Atlantic Ocean is an example of a slow-spreading mid-ocean ridge and ridge-to-ridge transform faults. The importance of MAR is caused by its structural connectivity with other marine geological objects on the seafloor: MAR is a part of the global planetary geomorphological structure that forms a system that includes the seafloor of the oceans
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