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What is it?
What is it?
The continental shelf is the part of a continent that is submerged under water and extends until a drop-off point called the shelf break. The average depth is about 150m and 70km in width and is characterized by a very gentle slope of about 1 degree. It is a very large area that represents about 7% of the surface area of the oceans (27million km2). The world’s largest continental shelf extends 1,500 km (about 930 miles) from the coast of Siberia into the Arctic Ocean.
What is the biological value?
What is the biological value?
Continental shelves are an oasis in the ocean, the depth and geomorphological difference across the entire continental shelf leads to a high diversity among species, part of the seabed of this area is shallow enough to get light. Additionally, they have a large quantity of nutrient-rich sediment coming from the rivers, and a good mixing because of the wave action, and in some areas upwelling. The benthic and pelagic biodiversity is thus very rich (Gomes et al., 2018; Mossop, 2006). Some continental shelves also contain seamounts, submarine ridges and hydrothermal vents (Mossop, 2015). In recent years because of climate change and direct human action, the abundance of very important ecosystems such a long lived and habitat-forming species on the continental shelf have declined (Ambroso et al., 2017).
What is the economic value?
What is the economic value?
The continental shelf is rich in minerals and petroleum, it is also “easily” reachable resources considering the quite shallow depth. One of the reasons the concept of the continental shelf was established in the UNCLOS, is a result of the nation’s exploitation activities on the resources of the seabed and subsoil. Indeed, offshore drilling began in the 1920s and could not indefinitely continue without regulations. The undiscovered potential of this part of the ocean is estimated to be more than 75% of the earth’s total potential (lkirodah, 2005). It is estimated to worth USD$ 11 934 trillions, with major resource potential in iron-manganese nodules and crut (also rich in copper nickel and cobalt), oil, gas and gas hydrates (Murton, 2000).
Research topics concerning the continental shelf
Research topics concerning the continental shelf
Throughout my professional practice, I read through some literature to satisfy my curiosity and have a clear vision of the bigger picture. The research topics surrounding the continental shelf are really vast, thus, I grouped the articles I found into categories, most of which were listed in the journal Continental Shelf Research. Here is a list of these categories and some of the most recent article I found:
Geopolitics, Laws of the sea (De Santos, 2020; Vega-Barbosa, 2017)
Marine environment and anthropogenic effects (Oliva, 2020)
Marine biodiversity, conservation and exploitation (Steinert et al., 2019; Gomes et al., 2018)
Physical sedimentology and geomorphology (Goes et al., 2019)
Geochemistry of the coastal ocean (inorganic and organic) (Statham et al., 2019)
Benthic-pelagic coupling (physical and biogeochemical) (Santiago et al., 2020)
Benthic, phytoplankton and zooplankton ecology (Genyffer Cibele et al., 2020)
Estuarine, coastal and shelf sea modelling and process studies (Reis-Filho et al., 2019)
Coastal water and sediment quality, and ecosystem health (Filgueiras et al., 2019)
Interaction of physical dynamics with natural and manmade shoreline features (Fernández-Montblanc et al., 2018)
Interactions between physical dynamics (waves, currents, mixing, etc.) and biogeochemical cycles (Chen et al., 2020)
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