Friday, October 17, 2014

Earth Systems and Resources Topics list

Woohoo! Get excited! Below is a list of topics to become experts on for next week's exam. The topics are arranged in order of relative importance (expect the topics on top to appear more often on the exam). Good luck.

  •        Plate tectonics – causes, consequences
  •        Properties and characteristics of soil – soil horizons and their characteristics, types of soils, nutrients – N/P/K, humus, sand, clay, silt, permeability
  •        Composition of Earth – layers of Earth and characteristics of each - crust, mantle, inner/outer core, lithosphere, asthenosphere
  •        Human impact upon soils – fertilizers and runoff, salinization, erosion – and how to combat them
  •        Composition of Earth’s atmosphere – organization, chemical composition
  •        Weather and climate – convection, weather v. climate, Coriolis effect, greenhouse effect
  •        Rock cycle – types of rocks, their characteristics, and how they form
  •        Carbon cycle – sources, sinks, fluxes
  •        Volcanoes – types of volcanoes and characteristics, connection to plate tectonics
  •        Earthquakes – P and S waves, Richter scale, how earthquakes are measured
  •        Properties of water – polarity, specific heat, cohesion/adhesion, expansion in solid form
  •        Requirements for life
  •        History of Earth and mass extinctions

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