Tectonic Shifts
This type of plate boundary is found at the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, where plates move apart and new seafloor is formed 1 .
What is a divergent boundary?
This process in the water cycle is directly responsible for the formation of clouds.
What is condensation?
This type of long-wave radiation is emitted by Earth and absorbed by greenhouse gases like CO2 and methane.
What is infrared radiation?
This man-made reservoir in Nevada has shown a significant decreasing trend in water levels over recent decades.
What is Lake Mead?
This property of water is responsible for a pond staying liquid at the bottom while the surface is frozen, allowing fish to survive winter.
What is water's lower density as a solid? (or ice floats)
This layer of the Earth, located beneath the lithosphere, contains the convection currents that drive plate movement.
What is the asthenosphere?
Because water does this when it freezes, it is a primary agent of physical weathering in rocks.
What is expands?
This effect, caused by Earth's rotation, deflects planetary winds and ocean currents to the right in the Northern Hemisphere.
What is the Coriolis effect?
This seasonal phenomenon in the western United States serves as the primary source of water for the Colorado River.
What is the snowpack?
This form of alternative/green energy has the highest intial investment.
What is traditional hydroelectricity?
When comparing multiple seismic stations, the station that is located this way relative to the epicenter will record the largest time difference between P-wave and S-wave arrival.
What is the farthest station?
The presence of surface rock abrasion or U-shaped valleys is often cited as the best evidence that an area was once covered by one of these.
What is a glacier?
f human greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase, this specific component of the energy budget model—representing heat sent back to the surface—will also increase.
What is back radiation?
This human activity accounts for the single largest consumption of water from the Colorado River.
What is irrigation?
This specific time of day typically sees the peak generation of solar energy.
What is noon (12:00 PM)?
This specific pattern of the seafloor in the Atlantic Ocean provides evidence for seafloor spreading, showing rocks are youngest at the ridge and oldest near the continents.
What is the ocean floor age pattern?
This property of water allows it to absorb significant heat before evaporating, helping humans maintain homeostasis through sweating.
What is high heat of vaporization?
This combination of two climate factors generally results in the coldest recorded temperatures at any given location.
What are high elevation and high latitude?
Generally speaking, as this human factor increases in the Southwest, the sustainability of the Colorado River resource decreases.
What is population?
As water temperature increases, this happens to the level of dissolved oxygen.
What is decreases?
This geological feature is currently forming in eastern Africa as the region moves eastward relative to the rest of the continent.
What is a rift valley?
This specific coastal process is the primary cause of sandy beach erosion.
What are tides? (or wave action)
A decrease in snow and ice cover leads to increased absorption of solar energy because the exposed land is typically described by these two physical traits.
What are rougher and darker?
Between the Upper and Lower Basins of the Colorado River, this one has experienced the greatest per capita water use growth since the year 2000.
What is the Lower Basin?
Solar energy is often labeled with this "unreliable" descriptor because it cannot produce power during the night or heavy cloud cover.
What is intermittent?