Test 2 Flashcards
What are the 4 oceans?
Where did the water come from?
- 4 Oceans: Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, and Arctic Ocean
- The water come from comets, which are made of ice, so when it melts, water forms.
What are the layers of the Earth?
Core, mantle, crust
What are the differences between oceanic and continental crusts?
- Oceanic plates are younger and more dense
- Continental plates are older and less dense
Who came up with the theory of continental drift/plate tectonics?
Alfred Wegner
What causes the movements of the plates?
Convection currents beneath the plates assists movement and heat from the mantle drives the currents
Which ocean is growing? Shrinking?
The Atlantic Ocean continues to grow and the pacific continues to shrink
What are the different types of sediments?
- Lithogenous Sediments: derived from the break-down of rocks (weathering)
- Biogenous Sediments: derived from the skeletons and shells of marine organisms
What are the features of the continental margins?
Continental shelf
Shelf break
Continental slope
Continental rise
What are passive and active margins? Which type of margin in the Oregon coast?
- Passive margins have sandy shores and are geologically inactive (east coast of US)
- Active margins have rocky shores, seismic activity, volcanoes and earthquakes, and tide pools (west coast of US and Oregon coast)
What are hotspots, hydrothermal vents, and trenches? How do they form?
- Hotspots are places in the mantle where rocks melt to generate magma.
- Hydrothermal Vents are openings in the sea floor where heated mineral-rich water flows out of. They are formed when two tectonic plates move away or towards one another.
- Trenches are depressions in the sea floor. They are formed when one tectonic plate gets pushed under another, creating a V-shaped depression
What is water made of? What are the relative charges of water molecules? What are hydrogen bonds?
- water is made up of 2 hydrogen and 1 oxygen
- its polar
- when negative and positive parts are attracted to each other, they form a hydrogen bond
What are the properties of water that are essential for life?
Cohesion, adhesion, solvency, and heat absorption
What is cohesion?
Adhesion?
Solvency?
- cohesion: water sticks to itself
- adhesion: water sticks to other things
- solvency: water is able to dissolve charged particles, salts and other polar substances, and gasses such as oxygen and carbon dioxide.
What is a thermocline? What could happen if ice was denser than water?
Thermocline divides the upper mixed layer with the deep, calm water below
How is salinity measured?
Salinity is measured in parts per thousand (ppt)
For every 1000 grams of water, there are 35 grams of salt
What are the main solvents in marine water?
What is the salinity of the oceans? Great Salt Lake? Dead Sea?
What affects the salinity of the ocean?
- hydrogen and oxygen
- Ocean Water: 35 ppt
- Great Salt Lake: 50 to 270 ppt
- ## Dead Sea: 337 ppt
What colors of light are absorbed first? Last?
How does that affect organisms in shallow water? Deep water?
- Red is the first to be absorbed and blue is the last
- Organisms in the deep water will most likely be either transparent or red, whereas organisms in shallow water will be more colorful.
What gasses are important for life that are dissolved in seawater?
What temperatures of water have the most nutrients? Dissolved gasses?
- Oxygen and carbon dioxide
- cold water has the most nutrients
- warmer water has the most dissolved gasses
What forms waves, currents, and tides?
Circulation within the ocean is driven by wind patterns and the wind is driven by sunlight and the turning of the Earth.
What are the processes that form winds?
The spinning of the Earth and the warming of the ocean/air because of sunlight.
What are gyres? What is upwelling/downwelling?
What organisms are affected by each.
- Gyres: the circular pattern of currents due to the Coriolis effect.
- Upwelling: currents that push deeper waters towards the surface, brings nutrient rich deep waters up to the surface. Its beneficial to organisms living where upwelling occurs.
- Down-welling: water sinking due to changes in temperature and salinity, brings gases from the surface to deeper layers.
What are characteristics of waves?
Crest = high point of a wave
Trough = low point of a wave
Wavelength = distance between two crests
Wave period = the time it takes for a wave to pass by a set point
How is surf formed?
Surf is formed by the wind
What affects the size of waves?
The size of the wave depends on the distance the wind blows across the water, the strength of the wind, and the duration that the wind blows.
What are the layers of the ocean and their characteristics?
- Surface Layer: from the surface to about 200 meters; stays well mixed most of the year.
- Intermediate Layer: from 200-1500 meters; major temperature change (thermocline) is located here. Less mixing occurs
- Bottom Layer: below 1500 meters; low mixing and normally cold
What are the different types of tides?
What affects the tides?
What type of tide does Oregon have?
- High Tide: waters on the side of the Earth closer to the moon
- Low Tide: waters on the far side of the Earth pushed away
- Spring Tide: when the sun and the moon are aligned and tidal range is greatest
- Neap Tide: when the sun and the moon are not aligned
-Factors that affect the tides include: bottom features, geographic features, canyons, reefs, and the position of the sun.
Intertidal zone
Area between the mean low tide and mean high tide
Subtidal zone
Area that is always submerged
Substrate
Type of “bottom” that is present in a community
Epifauna
Organisms that live on the substrate (ex. Mud snails and barnacles)
Infauna
Organisms that live in the substrate (ex. Clams burrowed in the soft substrate)
Meiofauna
Organisms that are so small that they live between the grains of soft substrate
Dessication
Hot water loss especially on hot windy conditions
Eurhaline
Organisms that are able to adapt to a wide range of salinities
Keystone predator
Top carnivores that have the ability to change community composition
Detritus
Broken down organic particles
Succession
The process of change in the species structure of an ecological community over time
Drowned River Valleys
Used to be land until glaciers melted (ex. Chesapeake Bay)
Bar Built Estuaries
Accumulated sediments (ex. Cape Hatteras)
Tectonic Estuary
Earth sinks due to plate tectonics (ex. San Francisco Bay)
Fjords
Channels formed by retreating glaciers (ex. Alaska and Norway)
Osmoregulator
Osmoconformer
Euryhaline
Regulate your internal salinity
Conform to the area around you
Tolerate a wide range of salinity
