Seafloor topography: A record of a chaotic dynamical system?

We suggest that limits on the number of independent variables that play a role in controlling the shape of the seafloor can be obtained directly from bathymetry data. To obtain this information, seafloor topography is considered as a product of a larger system that produces the oceanic lithosphere....

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inGeophysical research letters Vol. 17; no. 10; pp. 1541 - 1544
Main Authors Smith, Deborah K., Shaw, Peter R.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.09.1990
Subjects
Chaos theory
Dynamical systems
Dynamics
Geophysics
Marine
Meters
Sea beds
Searching
Topography
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary:We suggest that limits on the number of independent variables that play a role in controlling the shape of the seafloor can be obtained directly from bathymetry data. To obtain this information, seafloor topography is considered as a product of a larger system that produces the oceanic lithosphere. We hypothesize that this dynamical system is chaotic, and use bathymetric depth values to search for evidence of a strange attractor, the dimension of which approximates the number of degrees of freedom in the system. An analysis of Sea Beam multibeam data collected along a flow line of seafloor spreading in the Northeast Pacific Ocean indicates that the dynamical system that forms the topography (on the length scale of 100'S of meters) has an underlying structure indicative of a high‐order attractor.
Bibliography:istex:43A2AD1DD2366F780E04FED1D6D9681A5BD66B0D
ArticleID:90GL01523
ark:/67375/WNG-3J277LC8-H
ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
content type line 23
ISSN:0094-8276
1944-8007
DOI:10.1029/GL017i010p01541