Geology Exam 4 Review Flashcards
The selective absorption and reheating of Earth, resulting in warming of the atmosphere.
Greenhouse effect
These lifeforms replaced the reptiles as the dominant land animals in the Cenozoic era.
Mammals
A storehouse of climate data, where abundance and types of organic remains are indicative of past sea-surface temperatures.
Seafloor sediments
What is climate?
Average weather
Why are seafloor sediments very important in discovering paleoclimate?
Contain remains of organisms that vary with climate change
An uplifted wave-cut platform.
Marine terrace
Where do most dry lands lie in regards to the north and south of the equator?
20 and 30 degrees
_____ and helium were the first materials to condense into small particles when the solar system began forming.
Hydrogen
What is an erosional contact between tilted, older strata below and horizontal, younger strata above?
Angular unconformity
How is the wetness or dryness of a region measured?
Difference between precipitation & evaporation
Where are rainshadow deserts common?
Dry valleys of California and Nevada
What does the height, length, and period of a wave depend on?
All of these: fetch, length of wind blowing, wind speed
Represents the greatest expanse of geological time.
Precambrian
Arroyo, wadi, donga and nullah are all names for these type of short lived streams.
Ephemeral streams
Era in which reptiles dominated the land, sea, and sky.
Mesozoic era
What dominates modern climate change?
Human influences that exceed natural bounds
Extensive blankets of silt once carried in suspension.
Loess
A combination of three oxygen atoms in one molecule.
Ozone
Which dates can be determined by applying the law of superposition?
Relative Dates
The greatest storms on the Earth.
Hurricanes
Large landmasses that consist of all, or nearly all, existing continents.
Supercontinents
A dry, flat lake bed left after the water evaporated.
Playa
Tiny solid and liquid particles found in the air.
Aerosols
A buried surface of erosion separating younger strata above from older strata below.
Unconformity
An accumulation of sediment composed of locally abundant material, found along the landward margin of an ocean or lake.
Beach
Side of the mountain in which air rises, clouds form, and release most of the precipitation.
Windward
Principle applied to the undeformed sequence of sedimentary rocks, each bed is older than the one above and younger than the one below.
Principle of superposition
The spontaneous decay in the structure of an atom’s nucleus.
Radioactivity
Stones that are shaped and polished from sandblasting.
Ventifacts
Which are properties of the zigzag movement of sand grains along a beach?
All of the above, caused by obliquely breaking waves, it causes beach drift
Which of the following best describes the climatic factors that cause low latitude deserts like the Sahara in Africa?
Cool, dry air is descending, surface winds are blowing toward equator.
Traces or remains of prehistoric life preserved in rock.
Fossil
Tilted strata lie below the unconformity, and bedding in younger strata above is parallel to the unconformity.
Angular unconformity
Chemicals that are commercially produced and have been found to deplete the ozone.
Chlorofluorocarbons
Clean, dry air is composed almost entirely of ________?
Nitrogen and Oxygen
What is the age of the Earth?
4.5 billion years
The line that marks the contact between land and sea.
Shorelines
Changes that reinforce the initial change.
Positive feedback
The name of the process when waves reach shallow water, they are often bent and tend to become parallel to the shore.
Refraction
It means “sun in the making.”
Protosun
What are properties of the movement of sand parallel to the shore?
All of the above; may create spits, is achieved by longshore currents, is created by waves approaching at oblique angle
