Continental Shelf Landforms

Abstract

Continental shelves comprise the zone adjacent to the continents, extending from the infralittoral to a marked change in slope known as the shelf break. The shelf break is located at a variable depth from 20 to 550 m, with a global average depth of 140 m. They develop in passive and active margins and can be dominated by different processes, which include tides, waves and currents. The present day geomorphology of the continental shelf comprises a wide variety of modern and relict features as a result of different controlling factors—geological structure, sea-level change, and sediment delivery and dispersal systems—acting at varying time scales. This chapter illustrates the most common landforms observed in siliciclastic continental shelves, with special attention to the processes that generate them. Landforms include consolidated bottoms, erosive morphologies, prograding landforms, bedforms, gas-related morphologies and anthropogenic features.