Pollution Patrol
A substance that contaminates air, water, or soil is called this.
What is a pollutant?
Any substance in the air that makes it unsafe to breathe is called this.
What is air pollution?
The breakdown of rock into smaller pieces is called this.
What is weathering?
To save or protect a resource is to do this.
What is conserve?
A planet that orbits a star outside our solar system is called this.
What is an exoplanet?
The presence of harmful substances or matter in water is called this.
What is water pollution?
The word formed from “smoke” and “fog” is this.
What is smog?
The movement of sediment away from one place is called this.
What is erosion?
A resource that can naturally be replaced or replenished is called this.
What is a renewable resource?
The region around a star where temperatures may allow liquid surface water is called this.
What is the habitable zone?
Oil spills may harm these tiny algae at the base of aquatic food webs.
What is plankton?
Smog forms when pollutants from burning fuels interact with air and this source of energy.
What is sunlight?
When sediment is dropped somewhere new, the process is called this.
What is deposition?
Fresh water is renewable, but it can still become limited if people do this.
What is use it faster than it can be replenished?
NASA used this mission to search for planets in habitable zones around other stars.
What is the Kepler mission?
Scientists may soak up, skim, burn, or use bacteria to break down this difficult-to-remove water pollutant.
What is spilled oil?
Ozone is helpful high in the atmosphere but harmful when it is found here.
What is near the ground?
A crack or break between zones of rock in Earth’s crust is called this.
What is a fault?
In the United States, this federal agency helps monitor water use and air quality.
What is the Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA?
For life as we know it, a planet needs a hydrosphere containing this substance in liquid form.
What is water?
Explain how chemicals applied to farm fields can eventually pollute both surface water and groundwater.
What is: rain can wash the chemicals into streams and lakes or cause them to seep through the soil into groundwater?
Give two ways plants can improve air quality according to the text.
What are: absorbing pollutants/carbon dioxide, releasing oxygen, and trapping dust or other particles?
Explain how movement along a fault can produce an earthquake.
What is: pressure builds as plates move, rock eventually breaks, energy is released as seismic waves, and those waves cause the ground to shake?
Why can a renewable resource still require conservation?
What is: it may be replaced naturally, but people can use it faster than nature replaces it?
Biosphere 2 had plenty of plants, yet oxygen became too low. What could have caused the imbalance?
What is too many people and animals compared to the number of plants, or, bacteria in overly compost-rich soil using too much oxygen and releasing too much carbon dioxide?