Water Basics
The attraction of water molecules to one another through hydrogen bonding
What is cohesion?
The largest estuary in the United States and one of the most productive estuaries in the whole world
What is the Chesapeake Bay?
The source of most irrigation and drinking water
What is underground (groundwater)?
The percent of salinity found in saltwater biomes
What is 3%?
The rate at which sunlight is converted into organic compounds through photosynthesis
What is primary productivity?
Rainwater with low pH, caused by the mixing of air pollutants with water vapor, that has the ability to damage foliage, statues, and buildings
What is acid rain?
The location in which freshwater and saltwater mix at the mouth of a river
What is an estuary?
The impermeable layer underground that sits between the confined and unconfined aquifers
What is an aquitard?
The type of symbiotic relationship that exists between stony marine corals and zooxanthellae
What is mutualistic?
The factor limiting photosynthesis in marine biomes
What are nutrients?
The stage of the water cycle where water travels along the ground into a larger body of water
What is runoff?
The percentage of Earth's water that is freshwater
What is 2.5%?
The depth at which the soil is saturated with water
What is the water table?
Why coral bleaching can be indicative of unusual water temperatures
What is a stress response?
The portion of the ocean where sunlight is able to penetrate the water
What is the euphotic zone?
The stage of the water cycle where water seeps into the ground
What is infiltration?
The process by which nutrient runoff leads to acidification of a waterway
What is eutrophication?
The layer underground where water (largely precipitation) flows into for potentially long-term storage that sits ABOVE the aquitard
Microscopic bacteria, algae, and plants that complete half of global photosynthesis
The color of light that is most able to penetrate deep into the ocean
What is blue?
The stage of the water cycle where water evaporates from the leaves of plants/trees
One of the three characteristics of headwaters (trickling stream or waterfall at the highest point of a watershed)
What is cold, fast moving, or low biodiversity?
One of the three primary causes of the Dust Bowl in the 1930s
What is weather, prolonged drought, or poor farming techniques?
The transition ("zone") between land and sea
What is the intertidal zone?
Net Primary Productivity = Gross Primary Productivity - ?
What is Cellular Respiration?