Part I. The test will have 20 of the following questions, to be answered in a sentence or so.
1) What kinds of sediments would you expect to find in the suspended load,
saltation load, and bed load of a stream?
2) Using the idea of a stream profile, how does the addition of a dam affect
erosion and/or deposition above and below the dam?
3) Why do streams have V-shaped valleys?
4) What is a drainage divide?
5) Why do natural levees form along streams?
6) Why do both dams and lakes fill in quickly?
7) How did Lake Pontchartrain, in Louisiana, form?
8) Most stream deltas have a "delta" shape. Why doesn't the
birdfoot-shaped delta of the Mississippi River?
9) Why would you want an aquifer to have high porosity and high permeability?
10) What causes a spring?
11) Why might dumping waste into a sinkhole be a bad idea?
12) Use the words "aeration," "saturation," and "water table" in a meaningful sentence.
13) Which takes more water to produce, a pound of rice or a pound of hamburg? Why?
14) Why doesn't the Colorado River make it to the ocean much of the year?
(2 reasons needed)
15) How and why does a water table cone of depression form?
16) Why do coastlines get straighter as they mature?
17) Why aren't all coastlines straight? (i.e., what un-straightens them?)
18) How do atolls form?
19) Using the idea of conservation of energy, why do waves increase in height
as they reach the shore?
20) How is a fjord similar to Chesapeake Bay in how they formed? How are they
different?
21) How does a longshore current work?
22) Why does the shape of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, curl northwards?
23) How is a coastline spit related to a baymouth bar?
24) Shorelines occupy such a small total amount of the world's area, yet shoreline
processes are very important for the geology of continents. Why?
25) There are places in northern North America like the "Channelled Scablands"
in Washington state, now dry, that show evidence of enormous amounts of water
flowing up to 40 km3/hour. Where did this water come from?
26) Explain the two ways that glaciers move.
27) Why are the North and South Poles considered deserts?
28) Just by looking at a glacier you can often recognize roughly where the snowline
is. How, and why?
29) What are three main ways that glaciers lose ice?
30) Why are deserts often found behind tall mountain ranges?
31) Why can you often swim more easily in lakes that are in desert regions?
32) Most of Illinois and Missouri are covered with a layer of loess. What is it, and
why is it here?
33) What is the process of desertification? Name a region that is currently at risk of it.
34) What is the difference between a lateral and a terminal moraine?
35) How did Cape Cod and Long Island form? Were they on land or in the ocean at the time
that they formed?
(think about this one)
36) Why does climate history provide a record of global sea levels?
37) Why is the historical climate record so closely correlated with the amount
of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere?
38) What is ozone, and why is it so important for us?
39) What caused the hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica? Why hasn't it gone away?
40) What is the "greenhouse effect," and why is this a topic of concern?
41) Why do we consider water to be a non-renewable natural resource
in many parts of the world?
42) What is unusual about the global climate of the past 10,000 years
(compared to the times before)?
43) How might very long term (at scales of 10's to 100's of millions of years)
climate change be associated with levels of plate tectonic activity?
44) The global climate has been in a general cooling trend for the past 50
million years. Explain one reason for this.
45) What drives the strong 100,000-year cycle seen in global temperature changes?
46) What are the two reasons that the global sea level will rise over the next 100 years?
47) Why are CO2 levels in the atmosphere currently increasing at a slightly slower
rate than the rate we are causing through burning fossil fuels? (i.e., where is this
carbon going?)
48) Why was there a large move westward in the United States starting in 1816?
49) What is a geological reason for the French Revolution of 1789?
50) Why did civilization begin 10,000 years ago and not earlier, even though
our species has been around for more than 100,000 years?
51) How can urbanization make the effects of floods worse than they naturally
would be?
52) The rate that the U.S. is generating waste is greatly increasing each year, but
the amount that is being disposed into landfills is only increasing moderately. Why?
53) Why is the land subsiding in places like Texas and Louisiana, making coastline
storm damage even more dangerous?
54) Why are we concerned about topsoil loss? Why don't we just make more?
55) Name two materials do we do a good job of recycling? Name two materials we could
do a much better job recycling.
55) Why are coal and oil called "fossil" fuels?
56) Give three examples of energy sources that are directly or indirectly
solar-driven.
57) How do oil and natural gas form?
58) How does coal form?
59) Most of the continent of Antarctica has not been near the equator for a
very long time (at least a billion years). Why would Antarctica be an unlikely
place to find large coal reserves?
60) For more than the past decade the world's total petroleum oil reserves
have actually stayed nearly constant (at about a trillion barrels of oil). Why
is this?
61) Why doesn't $2.30/gallon of gasoline reflect the true costs of using this
fossil fuel?
62) What is the largest current obstacle to active solar power?
63) What is the fastest increasing (as a percentage) source of energy? Why is
this increase happening now?
64) What are gas hydrates, and where are they found?
65) Why might gas hydrates solve our short-term energy problem, but not our
global warming problem?
66) Explain this statement: "Hydrogen fuel is not a source of energy."
67) Why is nuclear fission a non-renewable energy source?
68) Why must the process of genetic replication during reproduction be
imperfect for evolution to occur?
69) What evidence do we have that an impact likely contributed to
the extinction of the dinosaurs (65 million years ago)?
70) Pikaia is a fossil chordate found in the Burgess Shale
formation. Why might this be very significant?
71) Why would a time of plate separation (as with the current distribution of
continents) foster greater animal and plant speciation than during the time of
a supercontinent (like Pangea)?
72) What is meant by the term "Cambrian Explosion"?
73) Why did mammals not dominant many land environments until
the Cenozoic Era, even though they existed long before then?
74) Why is Jupiter important for the existence of complex life on Earth?
75) Why is our sun the right size (as far as we are concerned)?
Part II: You will be asked to answer 5 of the following questions in a paragraph or so.
1) Explain how a stream meander occurs. Why does this happen? What happens if a meander
goes too far? What is the relationship between stream meanders and the flood plain? What
is an incised meander and how does it form?
2) Describe four different kinds of groundwater pollution. What complications
make it difficult for us to identify the locations and flow patterns of
groundwater and any pollutants it may contain. Why do hydrocarbons pose a
unique hazard?
3) Describe and compare the different ways that rock is eroded and
transported in stream, desert, glacial, and shoreline environments.
4) What are tides, and what causes them? What is the difference between a
spring tide and a neap tide?
Why are tides slowing down the rate
of rotation of the Earth? There are usually 2 high tides and 2
low tides each day, but the period between them is 12.5 hr and not 12 hr.
Why?
5) Describe four ways that continental rock can be transported to the ocean.
Which of these is significant in (A) deserts, (B) glaciers, (C) temperate
regions, (D) underground?
6) Explain how kettles, drumlins, eskers, lateral moraines and terminal
moraines form.
7) Explain the two different ways that desert pavement can form. Why are risks of
flooding sometimes high in desert regions? How is sediment transport in a desert
similar to that in a stream?
8) What are the Milankovitch Cycles? Explain how they are related to climate change.
9) Oxygen-18 isotopes are used as a proxy for ancient global temperatures.
Explain how this works.
10) What is El Nino, and why is it bad for fishing along the
west coast of South America?
11) Explain the effects of a volcanic eruption on climate for both the
short term and long term. Do these affect climate the same way? Give an
example of how a volcanic eruption has affected human society.
12) Explain how increasing global temperatures could make Europe colder.
Give an example of a time in the past that this has happened.
13) Describe three significant effects on the history of humanity due to
the rising sea levels that accompanied the ending of the last ice age.
14) Explain how changing climates that caused the famines in Europe and
flooding in Asia were connected to the plague that hit Europe in the 1340s.
15) Explain why Lief Ericsson and the Vikings were expanding into North
America at the same time that the Mayan and American Southwest cultures
were dying. What does this suggest for the near future?
16) Describe three significant effects that human activity has had
on the atmosphere.
17) A human society goes through four stages in terms of population size -
preindustrial, transitional, industrial, postindustrial. Explain this process.
18) Human population will not increase forever on this planet. Rank, according
to your own personal beliefs, the following factors in terms of their importance
in stabilizing the human population, and describe why you say this: disease, war,
famine (food supply), education, legal control, emigration (space and other planets).
19) Gold and other precious metals are mined in areas where they are found in
concentrations much greater than their average crustal percentages. Describe
how the plate tectonics system is responsible for concentrating gold in places
like California and Alaska.
20) Imagine that you are in charge of setting the energy policy for a town,
limited to the usual constraints (i.e., if you raise costs too much, you won't
get re-elected or re-appointed). What energy sources would you use (use at
least four), that match your own personal beliefs? Explain your reasoning.
(There is no right answer to this question.)
21) Imagine that you are in charge of designing a plan for the supply
of electricity in the year 2100, and you are responsible for three
U.S. states: Ontario (formerly of Canada), Nebraska, and Durango
(formerly of Mexico). What will be your main energy sources, and
how might the mix differ for the three different regions?
22) Creating a dam across a river can provide a source of energy (hydroelectric
power). What are some of the possible pros and cons of doing so?
23) Discuss some of the pros and cons of using nuclear fission as a source of
energy.
24) Discuss some of the pros and cons of using solar panels as a source of
energy.
25) Discuss some of the pros and cons of using wind turbines as a source of energy.
26) The fossil record and current diversity of life show a wide variety of
evolutionary mechanisms that have developed to allow organisms to survive long
enough to reproduce. Describe five of these mechanisms, and give an example
for each.
27) Briefly describe the evolution of fishes. Why is this relevant for human evolution?
28) Describe three ways that life in the Triassic differed from life
in the Cretaceous.
29) Describe the three fundamental components of natural evolution. Why does it
allow life to spread into every possible environmental niche in a very efficient way?
30) Describe 5 different factors that are important in allowing life to exist
continuously on Earth for 4 billion years.