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| a landmass above water on earth |
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| consists of the sun and nine known planets as well as other celestial bodies that orbit the sun |
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| the earth's center, made up of iron and nickel; the inner core is solid, and the outer core is liquid |
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| a rock layer about 1800 miles thick that is between the earth's crust and the earth's core |
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| the molten rock material formed when solid rock in the earth's mantle or crust melts |
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| the layers of gases immediately surrounding the earth |
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| the solid rock portion of the earth's surface |
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| the waters comprising the earth's surface including oceans, seas, rivers, lakes and vapor in the atmosphere |
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| all the parts of the earth where plants and animals live, including the atmosphere, the lithosphere, and the hydrosphere |
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| the thin rock layer making up the earth's surface |
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| the hypothesis that all continents were once joined into a supercontinent that split apart over millions of years |
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| the continuous circulation of water among the atmosphere, the oceans, and the earth |
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| an area drained by a major river and its tributaries |
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| the water held under the earth's surface, often in and around the pores of rock |
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| the level at which rock is saturated |
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| the earth's surface from the edge of a continent to the deep part of the ocean |
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| the difference in elevation of a landform from the lowest point to the highest point |
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| plates move apart, spreading horizontally |
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| plates collide, causing either one plate to dive under the other or the edges of both plates to crumple |
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| plates slide past one another |
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| a sometimes violent movement of the earth, produced when tectonic plates grind or slip past each other at a fault |
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| a device that measures the size of the waves created by an earthquake |
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| the point on the earth's surface that corresponds to the location in the earth where the earthquake begins |
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| a way to measure information collected by seismographs to determing the realtive strength of an earthquake |
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| a giant ocean wave caused by underwater earthquake or volcanic eruption, with great destructive power |
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| a natural event, formed when magma, gases, and water from the lower part of the crust or mantle collect in underground chambers and eventually erupt and pour out of cracks in the earth's surface |
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| magma that has reached the earth's surface |
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| the chain of volcanoes that lines the Pacific Rim |
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| physical and chemical processes that change the characteristics of rock on or near the earth's surface, occuring slowly over many years |
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| small pieces of rock produced by weathering processes |
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| natural process that break rock into smaller pieces |
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| a process that changes rock into a new substance through interaction among elements in the air or water and the minerals in the rock |
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| an enormous moving shelf that forms the earth's crust |
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| the combined characteristics of landforms and their distribution in a region |
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| the result of weathering on matter, created by the action of wind, water, ice or gravity |
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| a fan-like landform made of depsited sediment, left by a river that slows as it enters the ocean |
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| wind-blown silt and clay sediment that produces very fertile soil |
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| a large, long-lasting mass of ice that moves because of gravity |
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| the changing of landforms by slowly moving glaciers |
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| a ridge or hill of rock carried and finally deposited by a glacier |
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| a fracture in the earth's crust |
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