Mapping the Deep (MTD) Chs 4&5 Review Questions (RQs)

Ch. 4: A Map of the World

1. What are turbidity currents and why do they affect the composition of the sea floor far from continents?

2. Explain one or two ways that Marie Tharp's maps of the sea floor differ from reality, and why such distortions might be important.

3. Which features do we know better? Those of the sea floor or those of the surface of Venus? What sort of data collected by satellites has helped to map the topographical features of each of these? To see the best map publicly available of the entire sea floor, please go to our Blackboard site under External Links and download the pdf of the worldwide map by Sandwell and Smith, which is included as a pair of color plates in Mapping the Deep.

Ch. 5: The Seafloor at Birth

1. How did the U.S. Navy, using multi-beam sonar, complete even better maps of the ocean floors than Sandwell's and Smith's map based on satellite data? Why didn't the author of MTD use the Navy's map instead? What sort of innovations did oceanographers come up with in order to do mapping themselves? What are a couple of advantage of the oceanographers' method of mapping, compared with that of the Navy?

2. Briefly compare and contrast the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and the East Pacific Rise.