Unit 6

Vocabulary

Atmosphere: Layer of air surrounding the Earth's surface.


Lithosphere: Hard outer layer of Earth. Consist of rocks and soils.


Plate Tectonics: The outer layer of lithosphere moving by the movement of the mantle.

Tectonic Cycle: Cycle of the mountain belts over the period of time.


Divergent Plate Boundaries: Occurs beneath the Ocean lithosphere. Convection current lifts up the lithosphere layer and creates a volcano.

Convergent Plate Boundaries: When two plates run and collide each other.


Transform Fault Boundary: Where plates slide each other.

Physical Weathering: Rocks breaking apart without changing their chemical composition.

Chemical Weathering:  Rock break apart due to the chemical reactions.

Erosion: Gradual destruction of rocks due to other physical effects.

Deposition:  When sediments like soil and rocks are added to the land.

Cation Exchange Capacity: Amount of cation that soil can hold.

Base saturation: Amount of basic cations that occupy the cation exchange sites divided by the total CEC.

Soil Degradation: Degraded soil quality due to wrong use of the soil. For example if the farmers deplete the land and continue to farm on the same land over and over again, soil degradation will happen to the land.

Ores: Natural solid material. Can be a metal or a mineral that can be later valuable.


Big Picture Reflection

Human Impact: Humans require a lot of resources and they are all from the environment around us. To contain resources like oil, coal, iron, and other valuable minerals like diamonds, rubies, and etc, humans have to deplete the land. Mountaintop removal, open pit, strip, subsurface, and placer are all caused by human actions.

Environmental Impact:  Due to the mountaintop removal, open pit, strip, and etc, many species are losing their original habitat. Continued alteration of the original environment will eventually cause alteration in not only the animal's lives but in our lives.

Economic Impact: There is a huge industry of steal, iron, coal, and valuable minerals. These industries are part of our economy, providing not only the needed products to the customers, but jobs to millions of people all around the world. But most of the resources that we use and need are not renewable. This means that these resources will run out someday and will have a huge impact on the companies and the world economy. Trading materials will stop, causing problems in international relations and market.

Government Legislation: Federal Land Policy and Management Act prevents unnecessary degradation of federal lands. This will help the lands to be nutrient rich instead of having a soil degradation. This will also have an impact on our lives because our crops will be more nutrient rich.