Hydrology
Any form of water, whether liquid or solid, that falls from the atmosphere and reaches Earth's surface.
What is precipitatation?
A chemical bond in which electrons are transferred from metal atoms to nonmetal atoms. This type of bond forms crystal lattices.
What is an ionic bond?
The amount of water flowing through a stream, measured in units such as cubic meters per second (m^3/s).
What is discharge?
A naturally occurring, inorganic, crystalline solid with a definite chemical composition.
What is a mineral?
The horizontal distance from crest to crest or trough to trough of a wave.
What is wavelength?
Water in Earth's crust that is in the zone of saturation, meaning that most pore spaces are filled with water.
What is groundwater?
A water solution that contains an excess of hydrogen (H+) ions which may attack and break chemical bonds, accelerating the breakdown of minerals.
What is acid?
The graph of the slope of a stream from its head to its mouth
What is a stream profile?
A solid mixture of one or more minerals.
What is a rock?
A weather instrument used to measure wind speed.
What is an anemometer?
Precipitation that does not evaporate or infiltrate, but runs over Earth's surface into streams.
What is runoff?
Atoms of the same element that have different numbers of neutrons in their nuclei.
What are isotopes?
A mathematical measurement of the rate of change of surface elevation, such as Earth's ground surface or a stream, over a given horizontal distance.
An erosional surface preserved in a stack of rock layers.
What is an unconformity?
A tide with a maximum daily tidal range, occurring when the Sun, Moon, and Earth are arranged in a straight line (only occurs during a full or new Moon phase.)
What is a spring tide?
A very large, thick mass of glacial ice that spreads out in all directions. Also called a continental glacier.
What is an ice sheet?
The phase change of a substance from liquid to gas without first being heated to the boiling point.
What is evaporation?
Gradient expressed as a percent. The rise over run of Earth's surface multiplied by 100.
What is percent slope?
Fossilized dung, which is a type of trace fossil.
What are coprolites?
The latitude zone around 30 degrees north and south of the equator characterized by light winds and hot, dry weather.
What are the horse latitudes?
Any ground—including soil, rock, or sediment—that remains completely frozen at or below 0 degrees C for at least two consecutive years.
What is permafrost?
Rather than dating rocks, this radiometric dating is used to determine the absolute ages of once living material. It can date plant and animal samples, such as archeological samples, charcoal, bones, shells, or plant debris buried in deposits.
What is carbon-14 dating?
The relative proportions of sand, silt, and clay particles in the soil, often displayed on a triangle.
What is soil texture?
The crust-mantle boundary, characterized both by a change in rock composition and a change in seismic wave velocity.
What is the Moho discontinuity?
The theory of how regular changes in Earth's orbit affect global climate over periods of thousands of years.
What is the Milankovitch theory?