Plate Tectonics
Earth's history is measured using this.
What is the geologic time scale?
This occurs when a large rock mass is broken down into smaller fragments.
What is physical or mechanical weathering?
These two gases compose most of Earth's Atmosphere.
What is oxygen and nitrogen?
This happens to less dense air.
It rises.
This is a large-scale pattern of water circulation that moves clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and counterclockwise in the Southern Hemisphere
What is a gyre?
Deep sea trenches usually form at this type of boundary.
What are subduction zone boundaries?
This is what the O horizon is composed of in a soil profile.
What is organic material (leaves, twigs, needles, animal bodies, etc.)
This is the deflection of an object's path due to the rotation of Earth.
What is the Coriolis effect?
When lower pressure allows the rising air to expand in volume, and this expansion lowers the temperature of the air. (What is this effect called?)
What is adiabatic cooling
This occurs where humid winds blowing inland from the ocean meet a mountain range.
What is a rain shadow?
Name at least one type of collision boundary.
1. oceanic/continental plate convergence
2. oceanic/oceanic plate convergence
3. continental/continental plate convergence
Why might very old soils be nutrient poor?
over time plants remove many essential nutrients and water leaches away others
This is a convection current in the atmosphere that cycles between the equator at 30 degrees North and 30 degrees South.
What is a Hadley cell?
Global patterns of air movement that are caused by the unequal heating of Earth are called...
What are atmospheric convection currents
Name at least 2 things that drive ocean currents.
A combination of temperature, gravity, prevailing winds, the Coriolis effect, salinity, and the locations of continents
This is what happens when two plates pull apart.
Magma from deep within the earth rises up, and new crust is formed.
A visual that allows for the identification and comparison of soil types based on their percentage of clay, silt, and sand
What is a soil triangle?
This is why the amount of solar radiation varies with latitude and the seasons.
The equator receives more solar radiation because receives the sun's rays at a perpendicular angle, so the sun's rays travel a shorter distance and is disturbed over a smaller area at the tropics than near the poles. Because of Earth's axis of rotation and tilt, Earth's orbit around the sun causes most regions of the world to experience seasonal changes.
These are convection currents that are formed by air that rises at 60 N and S and sinks at the poles
What are polar cells?
This is an oceanic circulation pattern that drives the mixing of surface water and deep water
What is thermohaline circulation?
This occurs when two tectonic plates move in opposite but parallel directions along a fault
What is a transform fault?
Soil texture is determined by these 3 things...
By the relative amounts of different sized particles
1. Sand
2. Silt
3. Clay
List each layer of Earth's Atmosphere in order (there are 5)
1. Troposphere
2. Stratosphere
3. Mesosphere
4. Thermospehre
5. Exosphere
List the order of convection cells as you move down to the equator.
1. Polar
2. Ferrel
3. Hadley
These are the consequences of El Nino and La Nina events.
Because ocean circulation affects climates on continents, the change in ocean circulation dramatically alters climates around the world, leading to hot, dry conditions in some regions, and wet, cooler conditions in others.