Answer These Biogeochemical Cycle Terms Flashcards

- Combines tectonic cycle, rock cycle, and hydrologic cyle
- Cycling of a chemical element or elements through the atmosphere, lithosphere, hydrosphere, and biosphere
- Transfer of chemical elements trhough a series of storage reservoirs, including air, soil, groundwater, and vegitation
- EX: Carbon, Nitrogen, and Phosphorus

- A massive disaster
- Typically many deaths
- Lots of damage
- Recovery typically long, complex, and costly

- A hazardous event that occurs over a limited time and in a limited geographic area
- Usaually sudden and causes great damage or loss of life
- Effect of a natural hazard on society
- 10 or more people killed
100 or more people affected
State of emergency declared
International assistance requested

- A principle of environmental studies
- "everything is connected to everything else"
- One action causes others in a chain of actions and events

- Statement that a particular event is likely to occur during a particular time interval
- Includes degree of probability
- EX: weather forcast

- Interval between occurrences
- Number of events in a given time interval

- Geologic conditions and materials impact type, location, and intensity of natural processes
- All physical, chemical, and biological processes on Earth reffered to as the Geologic Cycle
- Subcycles:
Tectonic Cycle
Rock Cycle
Hydrolic Cycle
Biogeochemical Cycles

Cycle of water

EX: not building a school on a fault line

- Amount of energy released
- An assessment of the size of the event
- Magnitude scales

- Reduce the effects of something
- Make less severe
- Various actions taken by humans to minimize the possible effects of a natural hazard
- EX: engineering solutions, Land-use planning

- a natural process or event that is a potential threat to life or property (a natural source of danger)
- The processes and events are not a hazard, but become a hazard because of human use of the land
- Hazard prone areas

- Determining the date, time, and size (magnitude) of an event
- use historical records, statistical analysis, weather conditions and forcasting

Risk of a specific event = the product of the probablity of that even occurring times the consequences should it occur

- Igneous
"fire-formed
forms from magma
rock that solidifies and crystallizes from a hot molten state

- Sedimentary
most are derived from fragments of existing rock or organic material
Lithification- cementation, compaction, and hardening of sediments (ex: clay, sand, pebbles...) into sedementary rocks
fossils

Metamorphic
any rock (igneous or sedimentary) may be transformed into a metamorphic rock
physical and chemical changes under pressure and extreme temperatures
usually more compat than origional rock therefore they are harder and more resistant to weathering and erosion