Geology and Oceanography Quiz

Study Notes

BOLTS: a mnemonic for the essential components of a graph, including Border, Orientation, Legend, Title, Scale, and Source

Longshore drift: the transportation of sediments along a coast parallel to the shoreline
Factors influencing wave formation:
- Fetch: the distance in which the wind blows
- Swash: the water that rushes up the beach
- Backswash: the water that flows back towards the sea
Types of waves:
- Constructive waves: have little energy, responsible for building up beaches
- Destructive waves: have stronger backwashes than swashes, contributing to coastal erosion

Erosion: the wearing away of soil and rock by natural forces like water and wind
Types of coastal features formed by erosion:
- Caves: created by the dissolution of soluble rocks like limestone by acidic water
- Arches: formed by the erosion of softer rock beneath harder layers
- Stacks and Stumps: remnants of sea cliffs eroded by wave action
- Spits: formed by the deposition of sediment by longshore drift, extending from the shoreline into open water
Deposition: the process of sediments or rock particles being deposited onto a surface by natural forces
Types of coastal features formed by deposition:
- Beaches: recreational areas, wildlife habitats, and buffers against erosion
- Spits: provide protection to coastlines
- Bars: influence coastal dynamics by affecting wave patterns and sediment transport
- Tombolos: connect islands or offshore rocks to the mainland, providing accessibility and sometimes acting as protective barriers against wave action
- Sand dunes: stabilize coastal ecosystems, protect inland areas from storm surges and erosion, and provide habitats for specialized plant and animal species

Convection currents: circular motion of magma in the mantle driven by heat from the Earth's core, responsible for the movement of tectonic plates
Plate boundaries:
- Constructive: plates move apart, forming new crust
- Destructive: one plate subducts beneath another
- Transform: plates slide past each other horizontally
Continental drift: theory proposing that continents were once joined as Pangaea and drifted to their current positions
Evidence for continental drift:
- Matching coastlines
- Rock formations
- Fossils
- Paleo climate data
Sea floor spreading: new oceanic crust forms at mid-ocean ridges through volcanic activity, supporting plate tectonics
Fold mountains: formed by the folding of rock layers due to tectonic compression
Earthquakes: sudden shaking of the ground caused by the release of energy from tectonic plates
Tsunamis: large ocean waves caused by underwater earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, or landslides, devastating coastal areas
Volcanoes: formed at convergent boundaries, divergent boundaries, or hot spots, with effects including ashfall, pyroclastic flows, and lava flows
Types of seismic waves:
- P waves: can travel through solids and liquids
- S waves: can travel through only solids