Chapter 3 Flashcards
A violent upheaval of change in the earth’s crust
Cataclysm
Those who believed in an old earth developing over billions of years tried to explain that the surface of the earth was gradually shaped by observable natural processes over cast spans of time
Uniformitarianism
What most professional geologists call themselves today
Neocatastrophists
The outer “skin” of the earth
Crust
The layer of hot, plastic material that is after the Crust
Mantle
What the surface of the earth is divided into
Continents
The variation in the landscape
Landform
The three types of landforms
Mountains, Plains, Plateaus
The formation where several mountains appear together
Mountain Range
Wide areas of level land
Plains
Wide areas of relatively flat land but they rise abruptly above surrounding lands
Plateaus
Deposits of sediment
Alluvium
The covering of air that surrounds our planet
Atmosphere
The solid part of the earth
Lithosphere
The water on the earth’s surface
Hydrosphere
The system where all the oceans flow into each other
World Ocean
Rivers that “feed” other rivers
Tributaries
The main river and all its tributaries
River System