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41 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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Describe the soil in tropical rainforests. |
infertile and poor in nutrients |
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What element contributes to the highest percentage of earths mass? |
35 percent of the earths mass is iron. |
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What is half life? |
the time taken for the radioactivity of a specified isotope to fall to half its original value. |
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Most volcanism is associated with ____________________. |
plate boundaries |
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What are the various stages of coal formation? |
peat, lignite, bituminous and anthracite. |
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High rates of extinction have taken place because of human activities at what time in earths history? |
During recent times. |
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What soil horizon has the greatest concentration of organic material |
The A horizon has the greatest amount of organic material. |
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Name the characteristics of a wetland. |
high in vegetation, precipitation, and organic material. |
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What zone do cattails grow in? |
Cattails are an emergent plant, meaning the roots are in the lake bottom, but the leaves and stems extend out of the water. |
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What is the process of removing sulfur from coal emissions. |
desulfurization |
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What is the order of soil horizons? |
O,A,E,B,C,R |
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What two horizons comprise the “zone of leeching? |
E zone and B zone |
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What type of volcano has wide gentle slopes? |
shield volcano |
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What boundary will you find volcano arcs? What are volcano arcs? |
Volcanic arcs are found in subduction zones, and they are the result of rising magma formed by melting of the downing plate. |
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Earths crust is neither formed nor destroyed at what type of boundary? |
transform boundary |
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New crust is formed at what type of boundary? |
divergent boundaries |
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What type of soil allows water to permeate quickly? |
sand |
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The Mesozoic era is known as the age of ________________. |
reptiles |
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What causes the earths seasons? |
the tilt of the earth’s axis |
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The majority of crustal activity on earth is centered in the _____________. |
plate tectonics |
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What is a sedimentary rock? Is limestone a sedimentary rock? |
sedimentary rock is made up of broken pieces of rock that have settled into one. Limestone is a sedimentary rock composed of skeletal fragments and fragments of marine animals. |
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The majority of rocks in the earths crust are what type? |
igneous |
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What is the difference in P waves and S waves? |
only p waves can pass through gas and liquid |
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The upward folding of rock is know as? |
Anticline |
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What gasses composed earths first atmosphere? |
carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and water vapor |
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What process caused gasses to start appearing in the new atmosphere? |
volcanic out gassing |
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What are good soil conservation practices? |
afforestation, fencing, and crop rotation |
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What is the rain shadow effect? |
The lack of precipitation on the leeward side of the mountain. |
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The northern hemisphere is dominated by land or water? |
land |
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The southern hemisphere is dominated by land or water? |
water |
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What geologic period did the largest extinction occur? |
cretaceous-paleocene 66 million years ago |
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What is hyperaccumulation? |
a plant’s ability to to grow in soils with very high concentrations of metals, absorbing these metals through their roots, and concentrating extremely high levels of metals in their tissues |
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What is bioventing? |
Bioventing is a process of stimulating the natural in situ biodegradation of contaminants in soil by providing air or oxygen to existing soil microorganisms. |
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What is electrokinetic separation? |
process that removes metals and organic contaminants from low permeability soil, mud, sludge, and marine dredging |
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10 thousend years ago there was mass extinction, what group of animals did it primarily affect? |
pleistocene era, effected large mammal species such as mammoths, mastodons, and giant ground sloths |
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What biome has shallow and nutrient poor soil? |
tropical rain forest |
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How many extinctions has there been in the last 600 my. |
five |
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What is the most abundant element in the earths crust? Atmosphere? What element is extracted from bauxite? |
The earth’s crust is most abundant in oxygen, and the atmosphere is mostly nitrogen. Aluminum oxide is extracted from bauxite. |
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Where is the world largest hydroelectric dam? |
three gorges dam in china |
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Desalination is used to provide what region of the world freshwater? |
Saudi Arabia, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Spain, Cyprus, Malta, Gibraltar, Cape Verde, Portugal, Greece, Italy, India, China, Japan, and Australia. |
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what is permeability? |
the state or quality of a material or membrane that causes it to allow liquids or gases to pass through it. |
