Atlantic Fracture Zones–Mid-Atlantic Ridge Geometric Coupling

Paper 91 of 383
Published May 31, 2026

The Mid-Atlantic Ridge extends through the North and South Atlantic Ocean as one of Earth's most persistent oceanic uplift structures. It is intersected and offset by major fracture-zone systems, including the Charlie-Gibbs Fracture Zone in the North Atlantic between Newfoundland, Iceland, and the Azores region.

This paper examines the geometric coupling between ridge continuity and transverse fracture organization. Observable constraints include ridge segmentation, transform-offset magnitude, fracture-zone spacing, directional persistence, and continuity across ocean-basin scale.

Rather than treating ridge and fracture systems as isolated features, this analysis evaluates their relationship as an integrated structural network. The coupling between uplift-axis continuity and lateral discontinuity provides a measurable framework for oceanic structural comparison.

This is decision-useful because ridge-fracture organization can be mapped, tested, and compared against alternative structural interpretations using bathymetry, marine geophysics, and plate-reconstruction datasets.

The objective is not to replace established seafloor-spreading models. The objective is to identify whether the observable geometry of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and Atlantic fracture zones contains recurring constraints that support broader ABC Sequencing comparison.