River Systems
Term for the spatial arrangement of channels in a basin
drainage pattern
The capacity of a soil to function as a vital ecosystem that sustains plants, animals, and humans
Soil health
What are the three types of plate boundary?
Divergent, convergent, transform
What is the general term for any process that wears or rearranges landforms and what are 2 examples of this?
Denudation
weathering, mass movement, erosion, deposition
What is a craton?
Nucleus of continental crust made of ancient rock
Three things required of a stream to accomplish geomorphic work.
List 4 causes of soil erosion
water, wind, overgrazing, tillage, deforestation, and/or land mismanagement
Inner core, outer core, lower mantle, upper mantle, lithosphere (asthenosphere, crust).
What is meant by differential weathering?
Softer rocks are eroded faster/more easily than harder rocks and leave behind the harder rocks. (buttes, pinnacles, mesas, etc.)
Pennsylvania is underlain, very deeply, by the Glenville Rocks. What are these?
Metamorphic gneisses
Level below which a stream cannot erode
base level
List 3 soil conservation methods
cover crops, crop rotation, no-till, reduced till, contour farming and terracing, agroforestry, windbreaks, mulching
List the 3 types of rocks and generally describe how they form.
Igneous - cooling + crystallization of magma or lava
Sedimentary - erosion, deposition, burial and cementation of other rock fragments
Metamorphic - rock is exposed to high enough P and T to change mineral alignment but not melt rocks
What rock is most likely to form karst and how pure must that rock be?
Limestone, 80% or more CaCO3 (calcite)
During period did many of our coal resources form and what did they form from?
Carboniferous (Pennsylvanian and Mississippian)
Swamp deposits - dead trees and plant matter get buried before decay; deep burial eventual creates enough pressure to breakdown everything but carbon
A stream's volume of flow per unit time (provide the word and some units)
discharge L/t^3
Earlier American farmers used <blank> to enrich soil <blank>
legumes, nitrogen
The principle that assumes that the same physical processes operating now were operating throughout Earth's history.
Uniformitarianism
What atmospheric gas contributes to karst weathering?
CO2
Pennsylvania's current landforms are dominated by the events that build and eroded the Appalachian Mountains. What are the four major mountain building events that built the Appalachians? (Bonus if you can tell me each period these occurred).
Glenville - Hadean/Archean
Taconic - Cambrian/Ordovician
Acadian - Devonian
Alleghenian - Pennsylvanian/Permian
Streams that flow some portion of the year and may or may not have groundwater inputs
Intermittent
What is a cool season annual cereal grain used to prevent erosion, suppress weeds, scavenge excess nutrients, and add organic matter?
Barley
Name 3 things we use to know that the plates move
seafloor spreading, age dating, bathymetry, polar wander curves, satellite imagery, fossil alignment...
Karst aquifers often store and transport lots of water. How many people on Earth rely on these water resources?
20 - 25%
Several physiographic provinces make up Pennsylvania. Name the two that cover the most area.