Sumatra Trench Sumatra Trench The Sumatra Trench belongs to the Sunda Trench or Java Trench. The Sunda subduction zone (called also: the Sumatra-Andaman subduction zone) is located in the east part of Indian Ocean, and is about 300 km from the southwest coast of Sumatra and Java islands. It extends over 5000 km long, starting from Burma in the northwest and ending at Sumba Island in the southeast. The Java trench was generated by the oblique subduction of the Indo-Australian Plate into the Sunda plate at a rate of 61mm/y (in the south) and 51mm/y (in the north). The oceanic crust being
Oceanic trench was not recognized until well into the 20th century. The term “trench” does not appear in Murray and Hjort’s (1912) classic oceanography book. Instead they applied the term “deep“ for the deepest parts of the ocean, such as Challenger Deep. Experiences from World War I battlefields emblazoned the concept of a trench as an elongate depression defining an important boundary, perhaps leading to the term “trench” being used to describe natural features in the early 1920s. The term was first used in a geologic context by Scofield two years after the war ended to describe a structurally controlled depression in