What Are The Continental Shelf Deposits And Where Do They Occur?

The continental shelf is a shallow sub marine plate-form at the edge of a continent, which inclines very gently toward the sea, the angle of inclination is generally at 0.1 degree. The continental shelves are broad and relatively flat at passive continental margins while these are broad and uneven at the active continental margins. The continental shelves of the world are usually covered with the relatively young sediments.

In most of the cases these young sediments are derived from the land. The sediments most commonly include the sand near the shore; where the bottom is shallow and is influenced by the wave action. Fine grained mud is commonly deposited farther from the offshore; where water is much deeper, quiet and not influenced by the wave actions as in case of the shore.

These continental shelf deposits occur at the intra continental rifts where if the divergence between the two continental plates continues until the two segments of the continent separate, the widening rift is flooded by the sea and a new ocean basin forms and grows. The receding continental margins subside gradually as the under lying lithosphere cools and contracts, forming off shore basins that can receive sediments eroded from the adjacent land.