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30 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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What is clay?
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It is a flaky material that compacts to form the soft rock known as shale.
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How do sediments usually accumulate?
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They accumulate in discrete episodes. Each episodes forms a tabular layer known as a stratum or bed.
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What is stratification?
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Also known as bedding, this word is used to describe the arrangement of sedimentary rocks in discrete layers.
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What is the name for describing rocks that form at high temperatures?
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Crystalline rocks
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What are formations?
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Classification of rocks into units or discrete body of rocks of a particular type that formed in a particular way.
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List rock units from smallest to biggest
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Members, formations, groups, supergroups
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What is stratigraphy?
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The study of stratified rocks and their relationships in time and space.
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What did Nicolaus Steno do?
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He formulated rules for interpreting stratified rocks:
- Superposition, original horizontality and original lateral continuity |
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What is central to the uniformitarian view of Earth?
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The rock cycle
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What are the two simple principles useful for recognizing steps of the rock cycle?
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- Intrusive relationship
- Inclusions |
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What is fossil succession?
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The kinds of fossils found in different rocks of different ages differ because life on earth has changed over time.
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What produces the actual ages of rocks?
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Radioactive decay
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Divide geologic time from largest to smallest
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Eon, eras, periods, epochs
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What is the geologic system?
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It is a time-rock unit consisting of all the rocks that represent a geologic period
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What is a fault?
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A fault is a surface along which rocks have broken and moved.
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The denser the material...
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the more rapidly seismic waves travel through it
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From the crust to the mantle, there is the
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Moho discontinuity
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Does it get more mafic as you go down to the core?
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Yes, because they have more iron and magnesium
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Explain isostasy and isostatic adjustment.
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Refers to the state of gravitational equilibrium between the earth's lithosphere and asthenosphere such that the tectonic plates "float" at an elevation which depends on their thickness and density
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What is the lithosphere?
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Where the crust and upper mantle are firmly attached to one another.
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What is the aesthenosphere?
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Right below the lithosphere (low-velocity zone)
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Where do plates move apart?
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At spreading zones
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What is convection?
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THe process by which material that is heated deep within the aesthenosphere rises to displace cooler, less dense material at the surface.
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What are the regions where plates descend called?
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Subduction zones, and the portion of a plate that has descended along a subduction zone is termed a slab
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What are plumes and hot spots?
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When a slab falls off into the aesthenosphere, then it'll melt and create magma that is less dense and will rise up in a form of a column known as a plume. Once it reaches the surface, it will create a hot spot, a place where the crust is elevated by the rising magma, which might erupt volcanically.
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What drives the water cycle?
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Heat from the sun
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What drives the rock cycle?
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Heat within the earth.
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What is transpiration?
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The process by which plants convey moisture from subsurface reservoirs to the atmosphere.
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What is an ecosystem?
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An environment together with the group of organisms that live within it.
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What does an uncomformity represent?
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A substantial amount of time when erosion, rather than deposition, occurred. There are angular unconofrmities, disconformities, and nonconformities.
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