Earthquakes

Concepts to know:

1. What is Seismology, what is studied?
2. What are the various types of seismic waves produced by earthquakes? Body waves, Surface waves, P-waves, S-waves, L-waves, Love waves, Rayleigh waves.
3. How are earthquakes recorded? Seismometer, seismograph, seismogram, locating earthquakes, intensity scale, magnitude scale, Mercalli, Richter.
4. What are the effects of earthquakes? tsunami, aftershocks, etc.
5. Where are earthquakes found? Their distribution? Benioff zone
6. How are earthquake predicted?
7. How are earthquakes located? focus, epicenter

The Earth's interior

Concepts to know:

1. Evidence from seismic waves, seismic reflection, seismic refraction.
2. The interior of the earth, crust, oceanic crust, continental crust, Mohorovicic discontinuity, mantle, lithosphere, asthenosphere, outer core, inner core.
3. What do meteorites tell us about the interior of the earth?

Shorelines

Concepts:

1. What are the various measurements of waves? wavelength, wave height, trough, crest, period of the wave, velocity, wave base, breakers.
2. What is the dynamics of waves as they move into shallower water? Surf, breaker, height change, wavelength change
3. What are the various features produced by waves? wave-cut cliffs, headlands, beach, spit, barrier island, sea arch
4. What are the various currents observed in the ocean? longshore, rip, tidal, surface.
5. What are the effects the sun and the moon have on the ocean? high tide, low tide, neap tide, spring tide.

Plate Tectonics

Concepts:

1. What are the premises of Plate Tectonics?
2. Who was Alfred Wegener? What did he propose?
3. What evidence do we have for plate tectonics? Fossil evidence, structural fit, paleoclimatic, paleomagnetism.
4. Who are and what did these people propose? Harry Hess, Fred Vine, H. Matthews, Francis Bacon.
5. What are the three types of plate boundaries? Convergent, Divergent, Transform
6. What are the three types of convergent plate boundaries? ocean-ocean, ocean-continent, continent-continent
7. What are these features and how do they related to plate tectonics, rift, triple junction, oceanic ridge, subduction, trench, island arc, back arc basin, fore arc basin, orogeny, suture zone, transform, obduction.
8. What are the explanations for plate movement? Convection, mantle plume
9. How does the magnetic field of the earth relate to plate tectonics? inclination, declination, magnetic reversals.
10. What is the Benioff Zone?

Sea Floor

Concepts:

1. What are the subdivisions of the sea floor from the continent out?
2. What are these? continental shelf, continental slope, continental rise, abyssal plain, trenches, submarine mountains, seamounts, guyots.
3. What are, and where do turbidity currents occur?
4. What are the differences of passive and active continental margins? What do you find associated with each?
5. The Benioff seismic zone is what?
6. What are the various types of reef? How do they relate to weathering and erosion of a volcanic island?
7. What is the composition of the ocean floor? How do Ophiolites relate to the ocean floor?

Mountain Belts and the continental crust

Concepts:

1. What is isostasy? What is isostatic rebound?
2. What are mountain belts, mountain ranges and how do they form?
3. What are the major mountain belts?
4. What are the characteristics of the major mountain belts? How do migmatites and batholiths relate to major mountain belts?
5. What is the evolution of mountain belts? Accumulation stage, orogenic stage, uplift and block-faulting stage.
6. How do continents grow? orogenic growth, terranes - suspect, exotic
7. What are suspect terranes, exotic terranes, accreted terranes?
8. What is a Wilson Cycle?
9. What is Pangea, Laurasia, and Gondwanaland?

Geologic Resources

Concepts to know:

1. Natural resources, renewable vs. non-renewable.
2. Geologic resources, energy, metals, nonmetals.
3. Petroleum, what is it?, how does it form?, where does it occur? How much oil do we have left?
4. What are resources estimates vs. reserves?
5. What is coal, how does it form?, where do we find it in this country?
6. How much coal do we have left? Resource, reserves?
7. What are the various types of nuclear reactors? What are the problems with nuclear waste?
8. How do ore deposits from? What are the Igneous sources, Sedimentary sources, metamorphic sources? Hydrothermal, pegmatitic, etc.
9. How do we extract ores from the ground? How does mining affect the environment?
10. What are Georgia's natural resources?