FOR PRINTING PURPOSES
Chapter Six Notes:
• Gaia hypothesis is the series of hypotheses that Earth’s organisms adjust the environment to keep it habitable for life.
• The field study based on Gaia hypotheses is referred to as geophysiology
• Negative feedback loops work to restore the normal values of a variable which stabilize a system (ex is planetary temperature mechanism)
• The five different biogeochemical cycles of matter are: carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, sulfur, and water
• The global movement of carbon between the abiotic environment include the atmosphere and ocean and organisms is known as the carbon cycle
• Fossil fuels are formed from the remains of ancient organisms
• In combustion organic molecules are rapidly oxidizing or combining with oxygen which converts itself to carbon dioxide
• The nitrogen cycle is between the abiotic environment and organisms (example nitrogen fixation or nitrification)
• Nitrogen fixation if the conversion of gaseous nitrogen to ammonia.
• Nitrogen-fixing bacteria employ an enzyme called nitrogenase to split atmospheric nitrogen and combine the resulting nitrogen atoms with hydrogen
• The conversion of ammonia or ammonium to nitrate is called nitrification
• The conversion of biological nitrogen compounds into ammonia and ammonium ions is known as ammonifications
• The reduction of nitrate to gaseous nitrate is called denitrification
• Nitrates from fertilizer can also leach through the soil and contaminate groundwater.
• Photochemical smog is a mixture of several air pollutants that can injure plant tissue, irritate eyes, and cause respiratory problems in humans
• Acid deposition is when other acids leave the atmosphere
• The Phosphorous cycle, cycles from the land to sediments in the oceanand back to the land
• Most of the plant’s sulfur is found underground in sedimentary rocks and minerals
• Water continuously circulates from the ocean to the atmosphere to the land and back to the ocean providing a renewable supply of purified water for terrestrial organisms known as the hydrolic cycle
• Transpiration is the loss of water vapor from land plants which add water to the atmosphere
• Estuaries are where fresh water meets the ocean
• Albedo is the proportional reflectance of Earth’s Surface
• The troposphere is the layer of atmosphere closest to Earth’s surface
• The next layer of the atmosphere is the stratosphere, where there is steady wind but no turbulence
• The mesosphere is the layer of the atmosphere is directly above the stratosphere and temperatures drop steadily there
• The thermosphere is characterized by its steadily rising temperatures
• The outermost layer of the atmosphere where it continues to thin until it converges with interplanetary space.
• The atmosphere has three prevailing winds known as the polar easterlies in the northern hemisphere, the westerlies in the southern hemisphere and trade winds
• Prevailing winds generated in circular ocean currents are called gyres
• EL Nino is a periodic warming of surface waters of the tropical East Pacific that alters both ocean and atmospheric circulation patterns
• La Nina occurs when the surface water temperature in the eastern pacific ocean becomes unusually cool and the westbound trade winds become unusually strong
• Climate comprises the average weather conditions that occur in a place over a period of years
• The dry land on the side of the mountains away from prevailing is called rain shadow
• A tornado is a powerful rotating funnel of air associated with severe thunderstorms
• Tropical Cyclones are giant rotating tropical storms with winds at least 119 km per hr
• The movement of these crustal plates is called plate tectonics
• A plate boundary is a site of intense geological activity
• When two plates grind together one of them sometimes descends under the other, in a process known as subduction
• When rock reaches the melting point forming pockets of molten rock called magma
• A chain of volcanic islands formed as the Pacific plate moved over a hot spot
• The seismic waves are vibrations that spread through the rocks rapidly in all directions causing an earthquake
• The site where an earthquake begins often far below the surface is called the focus
• Directly above the focus at the Earth’s surface is the earthquake’s epicenter
Chapter Fifteen Notes:
• The General Mining Law of 1872 was established to encourage settlement sparsely populated western states
• Minerals occur naturally in the Earth’s crust
• Suldfides are mineral compounds in which certain elements are combined chemically with sulfur and oxides are mineral compounds in which elements are combined chemically with oxygen
• Rocks are naturally formed aggregates or mixtures of minerals
• Ore is a rock that contains a large enough concentration of a particular mineral and High grade ores contain relatively large amounts of particular minerals and low grade ores contain lesser amounts
• Metals are minerals such as iron, aluminum and copper and nonmetallic minerals such as sand, stone, etc
• The layering deposits of iron , copper, nickel, chromium and other metals is called magmatic concentration.
• Hydrothermal processes involve groundwater that has been heated into the Earth
• Weathered particles can be transported by water and deposited as sediment on riverbanks, deltas and the sea floor known as sedimentation
• Surface Mining is when minerals are extracted near the surface and subsurface mining is when minerals are too deep to be removed by surface mining are extracted
• The overlying layers of soil and rock are called overburden
• An open-pit surface mining is a giant hole or large holes dug for surface mining are called quarries
• A shaft mine is a direct vertical shaft to the vein of ore and a slope mine has a slanting passage that makes it possible to haul the broken ore out of the mine
• Smelting which is melting the ore at high temperatures to help separate impurities from molten metal
• Acid mine drainage are washed into soil and water including groundwater by precipitation runoff
• A great deal of research is available on techniques of restoring lands that have been degraded by mining called derelict lands
• Reclamation of areas that were surface mined for coal is required by the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977
• Phytoremedation - the use of specific plants to absorb and accumulate toxic materials such as nickel from the soil is also being tried to remove heavy metals from former mining lands
• Mineral reserves are mineral deposits that have been identified and are currently unprofitable to extract but may be profitable to extract in the future
• The combination of a mineral’s reserves and resources is called its total resources or its world reserve base
• An Antarctic treaty is an international agreement that has been in effect since 1961
• In concern for Antarctica’s environment international agreements have been established such as Environmental Protection Protocol to the Antarctic treaty or the Madrid Protocol
• Manganese nodules are small rocks the size of potatoes that contain manganese and other minerals
• 1982 an interest in manganese nodules triggered the formation of an international treaty called U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea
• Such minimization of waste by industry is known as sustainable manufacturing
• The decrease in the weight of products over time is called dematerialization
• Industrial ecology is an extension of the concept of sustainable manufacturing which seeks to use resources efficiently
• Industrial ecosystems that compare in many ways to natural ecosystems