Fan Zhang

EAS4300-HW2

September 6, 2012

1
1.1

Early earth, oceans and life

What are the denitive evidences of the earliest existence of living organisms on the Earth? What are their approximate ages?

The living organisms should have the following characteristics (Thurman and Trujillo, 2004): can capture, store and transmit energy; be capable of reproduction; can adapt to the environment; can change through time. According to research on fossils collected from northwestern Western Australia, the earliest lives could be dated back to about 3.5 billions years ago (Schopf et al., 2002).

1.2

Geological evidences suggest that the atmospheric oxygen dramatically increased about 2 billion years ago. What is the origin of the atmospheric oxygen?

At rst, the atmospheric composition was supposed to be mainly H2 and He. When volcanoes erupted, the erupted gases contained H2 O, which will decompose into H2 and O2 when exposed to ultraviolet radiation. Through photosynthesis, cyanobacteria convert CO2 and H2 O into O2 and organic compounds, increasing the amount of O2 in the atmosphere (Stimac, 2002).

1.3

How does the presence of oxygen in our atmosphere help reduce the amount of ultraviolet radiation that reaches the surface?

Based on dierent wavelengths, ultraviolet radiation(UV) could be divided into three bands: UV-A (320-400 nm), UV-B (290-320 nm) and UV-C (200-290 nm) (School of Public Health, 2002). UV could photolyze O2 into O atoms. With external energy, O atoms and O2 could form O3 , that is, ozone. Ozone in the stratosphere absorbs UV-C completely and absorbs UV-B partially; meanwhile, O3 break apart into O2 and O: 1

Fan Zhang

EAS4300-HW2

September 6, 2012

O3 + (240 nm < radiation < 310 nm)O2 + O (Wikipedia, 2012b). Through such destructive and constructive processes, help reduce the amount of ultraviolet radiation that reaches the surface signicantly.

2
2.1

Ocean bathymetry and plate tectonics

Formation of many sea-oor structures can be explained by plate tectonics. Pick a bathymetric feature of your choice (e.g. ridges, trenches, sea-mount chain, etc) and discuss its formation mechanism.

Trenches: hemispheric-scale long but narrow topographic depressions of the sea oor. Formation Mechanism: when two lithospheric plates meet with each other, sometimes they will converge, and one lithospheric plate will sink beneath the other and returns to the mantle. At the boundary between the two lithospheric plates, there will be narrow depressions form, that is trench, which are also the deepest part of the ocean oor (Wikipedia, 2012a). This process is called subduction (Thurman and Trujillo, 2004).

2.2

Describe the general relationships that exist among distance from the spreading centers, heat ow, age of the ocean crustal rock and ocean depth.

The mid-ocean ridge is a continuous underwater mountain range and rises about over 2.5 km above the surrounding deep ocean oor. At the axis of mid-ocean ridge, which is called spreading center, new ocean oor forms and then is split into and carried away from the spreading center. Thus, the youngest sea oor rocks are atop the mid-ocean ridge and the age of the ocean crustal rock increases on either side of the ridge symmetrically. The heat ow interior the Earth comes out of mid-ocean ridge and then was carried away into the ocean. It is measured that the heat ow in the spreading center can be up to eight times greater than the average amount owing to other parts of Earths crust, while the heat ow at trenches is only one-tenth of the average (Thurman and Trujillo, 2004).

References
School of Public Health, U. o. M. (2002). Origin of the Earths Atmosphere. URL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone-oxygen_cycle. [Online; accessed 5-September2012].

Fan Zhang

EAS4300-HW2

September 6, 2012

Schopf, J., Kudryavtsev, A., Agresti, D., Wdowiak, T., and Czaja, A. (2002). LaserRaman imagery of Earths earliest fossils. Nature, 416(6876): 7376. Stimac, J. P. (2002). Origin of the Earths Atmosphere. URL http://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Ozone-oxygen_cycle. [Online; accessed 5-September-2012]. Thurman, H. and Trujillo, A. (2004). Introductory oceanography. Pearson College Div. Wikipedia (2012a). Oceanic trench Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. URL http: //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oceanic_trench. [Online; accessed 5-September-2012]. Wikipedia (2012b). Ozone-oxygen cycle Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. URL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone-oxygen_cycle. [Online; accessed 5-September2012].