Antarctica is commonly known as the land of penguins, cold temperatures, and is home to about 90 percent of the world’s ice. But did you know that under all of that ice hides miles and miles of underwater canyons?
Thousands of these geological spectacles — known as submarine canyons — exist worldwide, yet scientists have struggled to map and study them, particularly in remote polar regions. Now, the most complete map of the Antarctic submarine canyons has been published in Marine Geology, detailing 332 canyon networks that reach a maximum depth of over 13,000 feet.
“Some of the submarine canyons we analyzed reach depths of over 4,000 meters (13,123 feet). The most spectacular of these are in East Antarctica, which is characterized by complex, branching canyon systems,” said David Amblàs, from the Faculty of Earth Sciences at the University of Barcelona, in a press release. “The systems often begin with multiple canyon heads near the edge of the continental shelf and converge into a single main channel that descends into the deep ocean, crossing the sharp, steep gradients of the continental slope.”
How Do Antarctic Submarine Canyons Form?
Submarine canyons are vitally important to ecological, oceanographic, and geological processes worldwide. Similar to above-ground canyons, they are carved into the seafloor and continental shelf through centuries of erosion. In Antarctica, this erosion is caused by turbidity currents —speedy, sediment-rich waters that slowly wear away the underwater areas they flow through.
“Like those in the Arctic, Antarctic submarine canyons resemble canyons in other parts of the world. But they tend to be larger and deeper because of the prolonged action of polar ice and the immense volumes of sediment transported by glaciers to the continental shelf,” said Amblàs in the press release.
Read More: Glacier in Antarctica Caught Committing Ice Piracy From Its Neighbor
Importance of Antarctic Submarine Canyons
These submarine canyons help create rich biodiversity in the seas they inhabit because of their role in transporting nutrients between deep and shallow waters. Thanks to these new mappings, scientists have now discovered that the Antarctic submarine canyons play an even more important ecological role than previously believed.
The main role of the canyons is to exchange water between two points, often moving colder water formed near the ice shelves to deeper parts of the ocean. This process is crucial for both ocean circulation and the global climate.
Additionally, the submarine canyons are also involved in the reverse process — transporting warmer ocean waters from the sea toward the coastline. These warmer waters help maintain and stabilize Antarctica’s interior glaciers.
A Blind Spot For Climate Change
The realization that Antarctica’s submarine canyons play a larger role in the global climate than previously believed highlights a blind spot in climate change science. Since so many submarine canyons are undiscovered and understudied, they do not factor into many of the current climate change models. This is a problem because omitting these water-transporting canyons drastically limits the ability of climate change models to accurately predict ocean and overall climate changes.
“That’s why we must continue to gather high-resolution [data] in unmapped areas that will surely reveal new canyons, collect observational data both in situ and via remote sensors and keep improving our climate models to better represent these processes and increase the reliability of projections on climate change impacts,” concluded the study’s authors in the press release.
Read More: The Largest Mountain Range No One Has Seen Lives Under Antarctica's Ice Sheets
Article Sources
Our writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:
Marine Geology. The geomorphometry of Antarctic submarine canyons
As the marketing coordinator at Discover Magazine, Stephanie Edwards interacts with readers across Discover's social media channels and writes digital content. Offline, she is a contract lecturer in English & Cultural Studies at Lakehead University, teaching courses on everything from professional communication to Taylor Swift, and received her graduate degrees in the same department from McMaster University. You can find more of her science writing in Lab Manager and her short fiction in anthologies and literary magazine across the horror genre.
