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Encyclopedia of Marine Geosciences pp 1–4Cite as

Continental Rise

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Definition

The continental rise is the gently inclined slope between the base of the continental slope and the deep ocean floor.

The expression “continental rise” was first used by Bruce Heezen and Maurice Ewing in their account of the effects of the 1929 Grand Banks earthquake. It was formally defined in 1959 by Heezen et al. in GSA Special Paper 65. The Floors of the Ocean: I, The North Atlantic: “Since we have limited the continental slope to gradients greater than 1:40, we split off this lower portion of the continental margin into a separate province, the continental rise” (p. 19).

In many areas, local morphologic features interfere with the general slopes so that neither the upper nor lower limits of the continental rise are well defined (Fig . 1).

Fig. 1
figure 1

Heezen and Ewing’s (1952) diagram of the continental margin off the Grand Banks, showing the times of cable breaks after the 1929 earthquake and debris flow and turbidity current velocities

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Bibliography

  • Bryn, P., Berg, K., Forsberg, C. F., Solheim, A., and Kvalstad, T. J., 2006. Explaining the Storegga Slide. Marine and Petroleum Geology, 22, 11–19.

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  • Heezen, B. C., and Ewing, M., 1952. Turbidity currents and submarine slumps and the 1929 Grand Banks earthquake. American Journal of Science, 250, 849–873.

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  • Heezen, B., Tharp, M., and Ewing, M., 1959. The floors of the oceans: I. The North Atlantic. Geological Society of America, Special Paper, 65, 1–126.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geological Sciences, University of Colorado at Boulder, 2045 Windcliff Dr., 80512, CO, USA

    William W. Hay

Authors
  1. William W. Hay
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Correspondence to William W. Hay .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences, University of Szczecin, Szczecin, Poland

    Jan Harff

  2. Institute of Geography and Geology, University of Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany

    Martin Meschede

  3. Leibiniz Institute of Marine Sciences, University of Kiel, Kiel, Germany

    Sven Petersen

  4. Academy of Sciences, Humanities, and Lit c/o Helmholtz-Center for Ocean Research, Kiel, Germany

    Jörn Thiede

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© 2014 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

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Hay, W.W. (2014). Continental Rise. In: Harff, J., Meschede, M., Petersen, S., Thiede, J. (eds) Encyclopedia of Marine Geosciences. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6644-0_155-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6644-0_155-3

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-007-6644-0

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