1
Q
What is system?
A
A group of parts that work together as a whole.
2
Q
What is atmosphere?
A
The relatively thin envelope of gases that forms Earth’s outermost layer.
3
Q
What is geosphere?
A
The densest parts of the Earth, including the core, mantle, and crust.
4
Q
What is hydrosphere?
A
The portion of Earth that consists of water in all of its forms, including oceans, rivers, lakes, glaciers, groundwater and vapor.
5
Q
What is cryosphere?
A
The frozen component of the hydrosphere (ice and snow on land, plus sea and lake ice).
6
Q
What is biosphere?
A
The parts of Earth that contain all living organisms.
7
Q
What is energy?
A
The ability to do work or cause change.
8
Q
What is feedback?
A
A loop in which system action triggers another signal or action.
9
Q
What is model?
A
An exact copy of something on a much smaller scale.
10
Q
What is topography?
A
The shape of the land determined by elevation, relief, and landforms.
11
Q
What is elevation?
A
The height of a point above sea level on Earth’s surface.
12
Q
What is relief?
A
The difference in elevation between the highest and lowest points of an area.
13
Q
What is landform?
A
A feature on the surface of the Earth, such as coastlines, dunes, and mountains.
14
Q
What is mountain?
A
A landform with high elevation and high relief.
Mountains that are closely related in shape, structure, location, and age are called a mountain range. Different mountain ranges in one region make up a mountain system. Mountain ranges and mountain systems in a long, connected chain form a larger unit called a mountain belt.
15
Q
What is a coastline
A
A line that forms the boundary between the land and the ocean or lake.
16
Q
What is dune?
A
A hill of sand piled up by the wind.
17
Q
What is a river?
A
A natural stream of water that flows into another body of water such as an ocean, lake or another river.
18
Q
What is delta?
A
A landform made up of sediment that builds where a river flows into an ocean or lake.
19
Q
What is surveying?
A
The process in which mapmakers determine distances and elevations using instruments and the principles of geometry.
20
Q
What is water cycle?
A
The continuous movement of water among the atmosphere, oceans, and land surfaces through evaporation, condensation and precipitation.
In the water cycle, water evaporates from the ocean and other bodies of water, then it rises into the atmosphere and eventually falls back to Earth’s surface as precipitation, rain and meltwater then flow to rivers, lakes, and the ocean. Eventually the water cycles back into the atmosphere.
21
Q
What is evaporation?
A
The process where water molecules absorb enough energy to change from a liquid to a gas.
22
Q
What is condensation?
A
The change of state from gas to liquid.
23
Q
What is precipitation?
A
Any form of water that falls from clouds and reaches earth’s surface as rain, snow, hail, or sleet.
24
Q
What is transpiration?
A
The process where plants draw water from the soil and release water vapor from their leaves.
25
What is watershed?
The land area that supplies water to a river system.
26
What is aquifer?
Underground layers of rock or sediment that hold water.
27
What is well?
A hole sunk into the ground to reach a supply of water.
28
What is process?
A series of changes that happen over time and lead to an expected result.
29
Describe the rock cycle
Rock cycles through the Earth system: magma (hot molten material inside Earth) flows up through cracks in Earth’s crust - this new material cools to form solid rock. Over time, solid rock can be eroded into small pieces. If enough small pieces collect, they may get packed together to form new rock.
30
True or false: the constant flow or cycling of matter through the Earth system requires energy.
True.
31
What are the Earth systems' two main sources of energy?
Heat from the sun and heat from Earth’s interior. These energy sources drive cycles of matter in the four spheres.
32
Greenland is losing about 250 billion tons of ice each year - how is this an example of an event in one sphere affecting another sphere?
As Greenland loses more ice, the weight of the ice decreases. As a result, in some parts of Greenland, the land is rising about 1.0 cm per year, because that gets lighter by losing material will rise (while a landmass that gets heavier by gaining more water or other material will sink).
33
What is an example of a positive feedback loop involving the cryosphere?
As glaciers melt, they turn into liquid water that drains away or evaporates. This allows the land underneath to absorb more sunlight, which causes the surrounding air and land to get warmer. The warmer air makes glaciers melt even faster.
34
What happens in a negative feedback loop?
It causes a process to slow down, or go in reverse.
35
True or false: earth's topography used to experience constant change but that change is now slowing down.
False.
The topography of the land is constantly being created and destroyed by competing constructive and destructive forces. For example, as plates continue to push against each other, the Himalayas are still rising.
36
What are Constructive Forces?
Forces that construct, or build up, land by creating mountains and other large landmasses.
For example, the Himalayan mountain range in Asia formed over millions of years, as India collided with Asia and pushed up sections of the ocean floor
37
What are Destructive Forces?
Forces that destroy or wear away landmasses and affect the topography such as rain, wind, ice, fire.
38
Explain how a volcano is an example of one sphere interacting with another sphere to affect the earth.
A volcano releases ash and gases into the atmosphere and volcanic material into the hydrosphere. The volcanic material and gases may kill organisms in the biosphere, but ash can enrich the soil and give new plants more nutrients. Hardened lava may cut off old river channels but form a new lake.
39
What are plateaus and plains?
Landforms that have high elevation and low relief are called plateaus. Landforms that have low elevation and low relief are called plains. A plain that lies along a seacoast is called a coastal plain.
40
What are the 2 states in the U.S. with the longest coastlines?
1. Alaska
2. Florida
41
How were maps drawn before the use of modern technology?
People spent hundreds of hours walking over landforms or sailing along coastlines to survey and model what they saw.
42
How are Topographic Maps different from other maps?
They show accurate information on the elevation, relief, and slope of the ground using contour lines.
43
What are contour lines and intervals?
In topographic maps, contour lines to show elevation, relief, and slope. A contour line connects points of equal elevation. Contour lines also show how steep or gradual a slope is. The change in elevation from one contour line to the next is called a contour interval.
44
What do contour lines that are far apart represent?
They represent flat areas or areas with gradual slopes. Lines that are close together represent areas with steep slopes.
45
What modern technology helps to make creating maps easier and more accurate?
Aerial photography takes pictures of strips of land that, when fitted together, form an accurate picture of a large area of land.
Satellites use electronic devices to collect data about the land surface. Computers use the data to create satellite images that show details such as plants, soil, rock, water, snow, and ice that cover Earth’s surface.
46
What are GPS and GIS?
And in what ways are they more accurate than topographical maps?
GPS is the Global Positioning System. It's a navigational system that uses satellite signals to fix the location on Earth, which can help anyone with a GPS receiver (such as a phone) to locate their position anywhere on or above Earth.
GIS is the Geographic Information System. It's a system of computer hardware and software used to produce interactive maps using GPS, satellite images, statistics about an area, and other maps to display and analyze geographic data.
The different types of information stored in a GIS are called data layers. The data layers help scientists and city planners to solve problems by understanding patterns, relationships, and trends.
A topographic map is a static picture of the land's shape, but it does not capture changes, while GPS and GIS provide a dynamic picture that can be analyzed and updated instantly.
47
What elements of the geosphere and biosphere add water vapor to the atmosphere?
EWater evaporates from soil in the geosphere. Animals in the biosphere release water vapor as they breathe. Water even evaporates from your skin. Plants also play a role through transpiration.
48
What role does gravity play in precipitation?
As more water vapor condenses, the water droplets and ice crystals grow larger, and eventually they will become heavy enough so that gravity causes them to fall back to Earth in the form of precipitation.
49
True or false: the water you use today is the same water that your ancestors used.
True.
For millions of years, the total amount of water cycling through the Earth’s system has remained fairly constant—the rates of evaporation and precipitation are balanced.
50
Where is most of the Earth's salt water found?
Roughly 97 percent is found in the ocean as salt water.
51
Where is most of the Earth's fresh water found?
Of the 3 percent of earth's water that is fresh water, about 70% is frozen in huge masses of thickened ice massed called glaciers, near the North and South poles. Massive glacial ice sheets cover most of Greenland and Antarctica.
52
True or false: most pf earth's fresh water is found in lakes and rivers.
False.
About a third of Earth’s fresh water is underground. Only a tiny fraction of fresh water occurs in lakes and rivers.
53
What happens to most of the precipitation that falls on land?
Most will evaporate. A small amount of the remaining water runs off the surface into streams and lakes in a process called runoff, but most of it seeps into the ground. After a long time, this groundwater eventually comes to the surface and evaporates again.
54
What is the difference between oceans and seas?
Both are saltwater bodies but seas are smaller saltwater bodies that are generally inland and landlocked. Only a small percentage of Earth’s salt water is found in some saline lakes.
55
What bodies of water are surface water?
Surface water includes all the water found on the surface of Earth, including oceans, rivers, lakes, and ponds.
56
Even large rivers start as a trickle of water - describe how tiny streams become large rivers.
Rivers start as a trickle of water that originates from a source, such as an underground stream, runoff from rain, or melting snow or ice. Gravity causes these tiny streams to flow downhill where they join others to form a larger stream. Larger streams join others to form a river that flows into the ocean.
57
What are tributaries?
The streams and smaller rivers that feed into a main river are called tributaries.
58
What separates watersheds from each other?
Watersheds stay separated from each other by a ridge of land called a divide.
59
How do ponds and lakes form?
Ponds and lakes form when water collects in hollows and low-lying areas of land, supplied by rainfall, melting snow and ice, and runoff.
When a river bends, a new channel may form, cutting off a loop to form an oxbow lake.
Some lakes, such as the Great Lakes, formed in depressions created by ice sheets that melted at the end of the Ice Age.
Other lakes were created by movements of Earth’s crust that formed long, deep valleys called rift valleys.
Lakes can also form in the empty craters of volcanoes.
60
What is groundwater?
Water that fills the cracks and spaces in soil and rock layers underground.
61
Draw a diagram of how water travels underground through different layers to reach aquifers.
As precipitation falls to Earth, it moves through the soil and the small spaces within underground rock layers. This top layer is called the unsaturated zone.
Eventually, the water reaches a level where the openings in the layers are filled with water, or saturated. The upper level of the saturated zone is called the water table.
Below the saturated zone there are layers of rock that hold water called aquifers.
62
How much of drinking water is supplied by aquifers and groundwater in the U.S.?
Aquifers and other groundwater sources provide 55 percent of the drinking water for the United States. In rural areas, aquifers provide as much as 99 percent of the water used.
63
What is salinity?
Is the salinity the same in an ocean?
The total amount of dissolved salts in a sample of ocean water.
Near the ocean’s surface, rain, snow, and melting ice add fresh water, lowering the salinity. Evaporation, on the other hand, increases salinity. Salinity is also higher near the poles because the forming of sea ice leaves some salt behind in the seawater.
64
True or false: fresh water and salt water freeze at the same temperature.
False.
Fresh water freezes at 0°C but ocean water freezes at about –1.9°C because the salt interferes with the formation of ice.
65
In oceans, where is water lower in temperature?
The water temperatures drop as you travel away from the equator. It also drops as you descend deeper through the ocean.
66
How is water a constructive force? How is it a destructive force?
Water can deposit sand, clay, and sediment in a river delta, building up that landform.
Rain, ice, and wind are forces that destroy and wear away landmasses over time.
67
True or false: oceans hide mountain ranges bigger than any on land, as well as deep canyons.
True.
68
What is seamount?
A volcanic mountain that rises from the ocean floor but doesn't reach the surface.
69
What is a trench in the ocean?
A long, deep valley on the ocean floor where old ocean floor sinks back toward the mantle.
70
What is Abyssal Plain in the ocean?
A broad area covered with thick layers of mud and silt on the ocean floor.
71
What is Mid-ocean ridges?
Long chains of volcanic mountains on the ocean floor where lava constantly erupts and forms new ocean floor.
72
What is continental slope in the ocean?
The steep edge of a continental shelf.
73
What is continental shift in the ocean?
A gently sloping shallow area that extends outward from the edge of a continental.
6th Grade: November Midterms
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