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Nazca Ridge

4th September, 2024

Nazca Ridge

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Context:

A team of oceanographers led by Schmidt Ocean Institute have discovered and mapped a new seamount on the Nazca Ridge in international waters, 900 miles off the coast of Chile.

Salas y Gómez and Nazca Ridges

Particulars	Details
Nazca Ridge	An underwater mountain chain, along with the adjoining Salas y Gómez Ridge.
Location	Located on the Nazca Plate off the west coast of South America.
Tectonic Activity	This plate and ridge are currently subducting under the South American Plate at a convergent boundary known as the Peru-Chile Trench at approximately 7.7 cm per year.
Crust Composition	The ridge is composed of abnormally thick basaltic ocean crust, averaging 18 km thick.
Salas y Gómez Ridge	Stretches across 1,600 km between the Nazca Ridge and Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island.
Seamounts	Collectively, the Salas y Gomez and Nazca ridges contain over 110 seamounts, which represent approximately 41% of seamounts found in the southeastern Pacific.
Coral Atolls	Many of these seamounts are drowned coral atolls with nearly intact atoll structures, including drowned fringing and barrier reefs.
Biodiversity	The biodiversity of these ridges is isolated from South America by the Humboldt Current System and the Atacama Trench, marked by the highest level of marine endemism.
Recent Discovery	A new seamount on the Nazca Ridge, over 1.9 miles (3109 meters) tall, supports a thriving deep-sea ecosystem.

Ridges:

An oceanic ridge is composed of chains of mountains separated by a large depression.
The mountain ranges can have peaks as high as 2,500 m and some even reach above the ocean’s surface.

Seamount:

It is a mountain with pointed summits, rising from the seafloor that does not reach the surface of the ocean.
Seamounts are volcanic in origin.
These can be 3,000-4,500 m tall.
Eg: The Emperor seamount, an extension of the Hawaiian Islands in the Pacific Ocean.

Source

https://marine-conservation.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Wagner-et-al.-2021-Salas-y-Gomez-Nazca-ridges.pdf

https://astrobiology.com/2024/08/ocean-world-exploration-a-new-seamount-and-previously-unknown-species-discovered.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazca_Ridge

PRACTICE QUESTION

Q. Recently “Nazca Ridge” often mentioned in news is located in which of the following Sea/Ocean?

A. South China Sea.

B. Sea of Japan.

C. South eastern Pacific .

D. Arabian Sea.

Answer C

Nazca Ridge is a submarine ridge located in the southeastern Pacific Ocean off the coast of South America.

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