Part 1: Water Flashcards
- Define Infiltration
Once water reaches the ground surface, it must either run off via streams and accumulate somewhere on the surface or move down through the soil in a process called infiltration.
- Where water goes when infiltrates
The infiltrated water filters to the subsurface through the vadose zone and eventually accumulates in the phreatic zone
- Define Permeability
The size of those pore spaces and how they are connected, allowing the water to move through, is permeability.
- Define porosity
Porosity is expressed as a percentage to indicate the amount of void or pore space in the rock or soil; it depends on the size, shape, and packing of the grains.
- Define Aquifer
An aquifer is a bed that stores and transmits groundwater in quantity in the pore spaces between the grains
- Define Confined Aquifer
If there are aquicludes above and below an aquifer, it is referred to as a confined aquifer, “confined” by the aquicludes.
(aquicludes: relatively impermeable bed that prevents the transmission of water above and below it).
- Ground water can be replenished. Define Discharge and Recharge and how they relate.
The “refilling” process is called recharge while the emptying is called discharge.
Ideally, recharge and discharge will occur at the same rates
- How are caverns are formed
The holes formed by the dissolution of the limestone forms caverns or caves
- Difference Between: Stalactite and Stalagmite.
Stalactites:
The drips will form stalactites, structures that resemble icicles.
Stalagmites:
look like the stalactites in reverse.
- Define karst-topography and what kind of land form do you see?
Karst landscapes form in areas with high rainfall and abundant vegetation, carbon dioxide-rich water, and jointed limestone.
- Define Sinkhole and how it forms
A sinkhole forms as a steep-sided depression over a cavernous limestone formation.
- How does ground water moves beneath surface, and how fast?
Water flows underground by moving from void space to void space very slowly, on the order of only a few centimeters a day in most aquifers. It flows much faster on the surface.
- What happens when you pump water out of an aquifer?
Pumping out the water, which we must do to sustain us, will create a cone of depression around the bottom of the well.
- Define Stream
Any flowing body of water, large or small, is called a stream
- Laminar and Turbulent Flow difference
laminar flow:
If the flow is slow, sheet-like, and parallel to a flat or gently-sloping streambed.
turbulent flow:
the water is moving with high energy, rolling and roiling over a broad and deep channel
- Define viscosity
The viscosity of the water depends on what kind, what size, and how much sediment is carried by the water. The higher the viscosity, the slower the velocity of the stream flow.
- What are the different category of sediments?
?
- How can dunes can be formed in water and by wind.
The wind can form ripples and dunes, water can do the same. (Remember that water and wind are both considered fluids.)
- What effects the size and shapes of dunes
The higher the velocity of the water, the larger the structures formed: dunes are large as the result of higher energy/velocity, ripples are smaller and the result of slower-moving water.
- Define Saltation
Saltation is a way of moving material along the streambed by bouncing, giving the appearance that the grains or particles are intermittently jumping
- Define Meandering Landscape
If the flow is low energy, across a flat or very gently-sloping surface, the pattern will be meandering
- Braided Stream, what condition causes it?
braided is youthful and high energy
If the stream is flowing has a steeper gradient, high sediment load or highly-seasonal flow, the stream will have high energy and take on a braided appearance
- Continental Divide (Drainage Divide)
The highest point or ridge will act as a divider: water will only flow downhill from there. Every continent will have a region or regions that are higher or lower than others. This will nearly always act as a continental divide (Rocky Mountains).
- What determines and area will flood?
Whether or not an area will flood is determined by the size of the:
- drainage basin
- local topography
- climate of the region
- width of the floodplain
- size of the channel
- amount of rainfall
- and whether the surface over with the water falls or flows is paved or vegetated
