Exploring Physical Geography

Cover
Exploring Physical Geography
About the Cover
Brief Contents
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
About the Authors
CHAPTER 1: The Nature of Physical Geography
1.1 What Is Physical Geography?
1.2 How Do We Investigate Geographic Questions?
1.3 How Do Natural Systems Operate?
1.4 What Are Some Important Earth Cycles?
1.5 How Do Earth’s Four Spheres Interact?
1.6 How Do We Depict Earth’s Surface?
1.7 What Do Latitude and Longitude Indicate?
1.8 What Are Some Other Coordinate Systems?
1.9 How Do Map Projections Influence the Portrayal of Spatial Data?
1.10 How Do We Use Maps and Photographs?
1.11 How Do We Use Global Positioning Systems and Remote Sensing?
1.12 How Do We Use GIS to Explore Spatial Issues?
1.13 What Is the Role of Time in Geography?
1.14 How Do Concept Sketches Help Us Portray and Understand Features and Processes?
1.15 CONNECTIONS: How Did Drought Lead to Wildfires and Debris Flows in Southwestern Colorado?
1.16 INVESTIGATION: What Might Happen If This Location Is Deforested?
CHAPTER 2: Atmospheric Energy and Matter
2.1 What Is the Atmosphere?
2.2 What Is Energy and How Is It Transmitted?
2.3 How Do We Characterize Heat and Temperature?
2.4 What Is Latent Heat?
2.5 What Is Electromagnetic Radiation?
2.6 What Controls Wavelengths of Radiation?
2.7 How Does Solar Radiation Vary with Time?
2.8 Why Does Insolation Vary from Place to Place?
2.9 Why Do We Have Seasons?
2.10 What Controls When and Where the Sun Rises and Sets?
2.11 How Does Insolation Interact with the Atmosphere?
2.12 What Is Ozone and Why Is It So Important?
2.13 How Much Insolation Reaches the Surface?
2.14 What Happens to Insolation That Reaches the Surface?
2.15 How Does Earth Maintain an Energy Balance?
2.16 How Do Insolation and Outgoing Radiation Vary Spatially?
2.17 Why Do Temperatures Vary Between Oceans and Continents?
2.18 CONNECTIONS: How Are Variations in Insolation Expressed Between the North and South Poles?
2.19 INVESTIGATION: How Do We Evaluate Sites for Solar-Energy Generation?
CHAPTER 3: Atmospheric Motion
3.1 How Do Gases Respond to Changes in Temperature and Pressure?
3.2 What Is Air Pressure?
3.3 What Causes Pressure Variations and Winds?
3.4 How Do Variations in Temperature and Pressure Cause Local Atmospheric Circulation?
3.5 What Are Some Significant Regional Winds?
3.6 How Do Variations in Insolation Cause Global Patterns of Air Pressure and Circulation?
3.7 What Is the Coriolis Effect?
3.8 How Does the Coriolis Effect Influence Wind Direction at Different Heights?
3.9 How Do the Coriolis Effect and Friction Influence Atmospheric Circulation?
3.10 How Does Air Circulate in the Tropics?
3.11 How Does Surface Air Circulate in Mid-Latitudes?
3.12 How Does Air Circulate in High Latitudes?
3.13 What Features Result from the Upper-Level Circulation of Air?
3.14 What Causes Monsoons?
3.15 CONNECTIONS: How Have Global Wind Patterns Affected History in the North Atlantic?
3.16 INVESTIGATION: What Occurs During Seasonal Circulation Shifts?
CHAPTER 4: Atmospheric Moisture
4.1 How Does Water Occur in the Air?
4.2 What Is Humidity?
4.3 How Does Specific Humidity Vary Globally and Seasonally?
4.4 What Is the Dew Point?
4.5 What Happens When Air Rises or Sinks?
4.6 How Does the Surface Affect the Rising of Air?
4.7 What Mechanisms Can Force Air to Rise?
4.8 What Do Clouds Tell Us About Weather?
4.9 What Conditions Produce Fog?
4.10 Where and When Is Fog Most Likely?
4.11 How Does Precipitation Form?
4.12 How Do Sleet and Freezing Rain Form?
4.13 What Is the Distribution of Precipitation?
4.14 How Can Moisture Extremes Be Characterized?
4.15 CONNECTIONS: What Caused the Recent Great Plains Drought?
4.16 INVESTIGATION: How Do Global Patterns of Humidity, Water Vapor, and Precipitation Compare?
CHAPTER 5: Weather Systems and Severe Weather
5.1 Why Does Weather Change?
5.2 What Are Fronts?
5.3 Where Do Mid-Latitude Cyclones Formand Cross North America?
5.4 How Do Mid-Latitude Cyclones Move and Evolve?
5.5 How Do Migrating Anticyclones Formand Affect North America?
5.6 What Conditions Produce Thunderstorms?
5.7 Where Are Thunderstorms Most Common?
5.8 What Causes Hail?
5.9 What Causes Lightning and Thunder?
5.10 What Is a Tornado?
5.11 Where and When Do Tornadoes Strike?
5.12 What Are Some Other Types of Wind Storms?
5.13 What Is a Tropical Cyclone?
5.14 What Affects the Strength of a Tropical Cyclone?
5.15 How Are Weather Forecasts Made?
5.16 How Are We Warned About Severe Weather?
5.17 CONNECTIONS: What Happened During Hurricane Sandy?
5.18 INVESTIGATION: Where Would You Expect Severe Weather?
CHAPTER 6: Atmosphere-Ocean-Cryosphere Interactions
6.1 What Causes Ocean Currents?
6.2 What Is the Global Pattern of Surface Currents?
6.3 How Do Sea-Surface Temperatures Vary Spatially and Seasonally?
6.4 What Causes Water to Rise or Sink?
6.5 What Are the Global Patterns of Salinity and Temperature?
6.6 What Processes Affect Ocean Temperature and Salinity in Tropical and Polar Regions?
6.7 How Are the Atmosphere, Oceans, and Cryosphere Related?
6.8 What Connects Equatorial Atmospheric and Oceanic Circulation?
6.9 What Are El Niño and the Southern Oscillation?
6.10 What Are the Phases of ENSO?
6.11 How Does ENSO Impact Global Weather?
6.12 How Does an El Niño Start and Stop?
6.13 Do Other Oceans Display Oscillations?
6.14 CONNECTIONS: What Influences Climates Near the Southern Isthmus of Central America?
6.15 INVESTIGATION: What Oceanic and Atmospheric Patterns Are Predicted for a Newly Discovered Planet?
CHAPTER 7: World Climates
7.1 How Do We Classify Climates?
7.2 Where Are Different Climate Types Located?
7.3 What Are the Most Common Climate Types?
7.4 What Is the Setting of Tropical Climates?
7.5 What Conditions Cause Arid Climates?
7.6 What Causes Warm Temperate Climates?
7.7 What Are the Settings of Mid-Latitude Climates?
7.8 What Causes Subarctic and Polar Climates?
7.9 How Does Air Quality Relate to Climate?
7.10 How Do Air Pollution and Urbanization Affect and Respond to the Local Climate?
7.11 What Is the Evidence for Climate Change?
7.12 What Factors Influence Climate Change?
7.13 What Are the Consequences of Climate Change?
7.14 CONNECTIONS: How Do We Use Computersto Study Changes in Our Climate?
7.15 INVESTIGATION: What Climates Would Occur Here?
CHAPTER 8: Water Resources
8.1 Where Does Water Occur on the Planet?
8.2 What Is the Global Water Budget?
8.3 How Do We Evaluate Water Balances?
8.4 How Do Water Balances Vary Spatially?
8.5 How Do We Use Freshwater Resources?
8.6 How and Where Does Groundwater Flow?
8.7 What Is the Relationship Between Surface Water and Groundwater?
8.8 What Problems Are Associated with Groundwater Pumping?
8.9 How Can Water Become Contaminated?
8.10 How Does Groundwater Contamination Move and How Do We Clean It Up?
8.11 What Are Some Global, Regional, and Local Water Issues?
8.12 CONNECTIONS: Is the Ogallala Aquifer Sustainable?
8.13 INVESTIGATION: Who Polluted Surface Water and Groundwater in This Place?
CHAPTER 9: Understanding Landscapes
9.1 What Materials Compose Landscapes?
9.2 How Do Rocks Form?
9.3 What Can Happen to a Rock?
9.4 What Are Some Common Sedimentary Rocks?
9.5 What Are Igneous Processes and Rocks?
9.6 What Are Metamorphic Processes and Rocks?
9.7 How Are Different Rock Types Expressed in Landscapes?
9.8 What Controls the Appearance of Landscapes?
9.9 How Are Landscapes Weathered and Eroded?
9.10 How Do Landscapes Record Transport and Deposition by Gravity, Streams, Ice, and Waves?
9.11 How Does Wind Help Shape Landscapes?
9.12 What Features Record Transport and Depositionof Material by the Wind?
9.13 How Do We Infer the Relative Ages of Events?
9.14 How Do We Determine the Ages of Events?
9.15 How Do We Study Ages of Landscapes?
9.16 CONNECTIONS: What Is the Natural History of the Grand Canyon?
9.17 INVESTIGATION: What Is the History of This Landscape?
CHAPTER 10: Plate Tectonics and Regional Features
10.1 What Is Inside Earth?
10.2 What Are the Major Features of Earth?
10.3 Why Do Some Continents Have Matching Shapes?
10.4 What Is the Distribution of Earthquakes, Volcanoes, and Mountain Belts?
10.5 What Causes Tectonic Activity to Occur in Belts?
10.6 What Happens at Divergent Boundaries?
10.7 What Happens at Convergent Boundaries?
10.8 What Happens Along Transform Boundaries?
10.9 Why and How Do Plates Move?
10.10 How Is Paleomagnetism Used to DetermineRates of Seafloor Spreading?
10.11 What Features Form at Oceanic Hot Spots?
10.12 What Features Form at Continental Hot Spots?
10.13 What Are Continents and How Do They Form?
10.14 How Did the Continents Join and Split Apart?
10.15 Where Do Mountain Belts and High Regions Form?
10.16 How Do Internal and External Processes Interact to Form Landscapes?
10.17 CONNECTIONS: Why Is South America Lopsided?
10.18 INVESTIGATION: What Is the Plate Tectonics of This Place?
CHAPTER 11: Volcanoes, Deformation, and Earthquakes
11.1 What Is a Volcano?
11.2 How Do Volcanoes Erupt?
11.3 What Volcanic Features Consist of Basalt?
11.4 What Are Composite Volcanoes and Volcanic Domes?
11.5 What Are Calderas?
11.6 What Hazards Are Associated with Volcanoes?
11.7 What Areas Have the Highest Potentialfor Volcanic Hazards?
11.8 How Are Magmatic Conduits Exposed?
11.9 What Is Deformation and How Is ItExpressed in Landscapes?
11.10 How Are Fractures Expressed in Landscapes?
11.11 How Are Folds Expressed in Landscapes?
11.12 How Do Local Mountains and Basins Form?
11.13 What Is an Earthquake?
11.14 Where Do Most Earthquakes Occur?
11.15 What Causes Earthquakes Along Plate Boundaries and within Plates?
11.16 How Do Earthquakes Cause Damage?
11.17 What Were Some Recent Large Earthquakes?
11.18 Connections: What Happened During the Great Alaskan Earthquake of 1964?
11.19 INVESTIGATION: Where Is the Safest Place to Live in This Area?
CHAPTER 12: Weathering and Mass Wasting
12.1 How Does Physical Weathering Affect Earth’s Surface?
12.2 How Does Chemical Weathering Affect Earth’s Surface?
12.3 How Does the Type of Earth Material Influence Weathering?
12.4 How Do Climate, Slope, Vegetation, and Time Influence Weathering?
12.5 How Is Weathering Expressed?
12.6 How Do Caves Form?
12.7 What Is Karst Topography?
12.8 What Controls the Stability of Slopes?
12.9 How Do Slopes Fail?
12.10 How Does Material on Slopes Fall and Slide?
12.11 How Does Material Flow Down Slopes?
12.12 Where Do Slope Failures Occur in the U.S.?
12.13 How Do We Study Slope Failures and Assess the Risk for Future Events?
12.14 Connections: What Is Happening with the Slumgullion Landslide in Colorado?
12.15 INVESTIGATION: Which Areas Have the Highest Risk of Slope Failure?
CHAPTER 13: Streams and Flooding
13.1 What Are Stream Systems?
13.2 How Do Streams Transport Sediment and Erode Their Channels?
13.3 How Do Streams Change Downstream or Over Short Time Frames?
13.4 What Factors Influence Profiles of Streams?
13.5 Why Do Streams Have Curves?
13.6 What Happens in the Headwaters of Streams?
13.7 What Features Characterize Braided Streams?
13.8 What Features Characterize Low-Gradient Streams?
13.9 What Happens When a Stream Reaches Its Base Level?
13.10 How Do Streams Change Over Time?
13.11 What Happens During Stream Incision?
13.12 What Is and What Is Not a Flood?
13.13 What Were Some Devastating Floods?
13.14 How Do We Measure Floods?
13.15 How Do Streams Affect People?
13.16 Connections: How Does the Colorado River Change as It Flows Across the Landscape?
13.17 INVESTIGATION: How Would Flooding Affect This Place?
CHAPTER 14: Glaciers and Glacial Landforms
14.1 What Are Glaciers?
14.2 What Is the Distribution of Present and Past Glaciers?
14.3 How Do Glaciers Form, Move, and Vanish?
14.4 How Do Glaciers Erode, Transport, and Deposit?
14.5 What Are the Landforms of Alpine Glaciation?
14.6 What Are the Landforms of Continental Glaciation?
14.7 What Features Are Peripheral to Glaciers?
14.8 What Is the Evidence for Past Glaciations?
14.9 What Starts and Stops Glaciations?
14.10 Connections: What Would Happen to Sea Level If the Ice in West Antarctica Melted?
14.11 INVESTIGATION: How Could a Decrease or Increase in Global Ice Extent Affect Sea Level in North America?
CHAPTER 15: Coasts and Changing Sea Levels
15.1 What Processes Occur Along Coasts?
15.2 What Causes High Tides and Low Tides?
15.3 How Do Waves Form and Propagate?
15.4 How Is Material Eroded, Transported, and Deposited Along Coasts?
15.5 What Landforms Occur Along Coasts?
15.6 How Do Reefs and Coral Atolls Form?
15.7 What Happens When Sea Level Changes?
15.8 What Causes Changes in Sea Level?
15.9 What Are Some Challenges of Living in a Coastal Zone?
15.10 How Do We Assess the Relative Risks of Different Stretches of Coastline?
15.11 Connections: What Coastal Damage Was Caused by These Recent Atlantic Hurricanes?
15.12 INVESTIGATION: What Is Happening Along the Coast of This Island?
CHAPTER 16: Soils
16.1 What Is Soil?
16.2 What Are the Physical Properties of Soil?
16.3 What Is the Role of Water in Soil?
16.4 What Are the Chemical and Biological Properties of Soil?
16.5 How Do Climate and Vegetation Affect Soil?
16.6 How Do Terrain, Parent Material, and Time Affect Soil?
16.7 What Are the Major Layers of Soil?
16.8 What Are the Major Types of Soil?
16.9 What Types of Soils Largely Reflect the Local Setting or Initial Stages in Soil Formation?
16.10 What Types of Soils Form Under RelativelyWarm Conditions?
16.11 What Types of Soils Form Under Temperate and Polar Conditions?
16.12 Where Do the Various Soil Types Exist?
16.13 What Are the Causes and Impacts of Soil Erosion?
16.14 CONNECTIONS: How Does Soil Impact the Way We Use Land?
16.15 INVESTIGATION: Where Do These Soils Originate?
CHAPTER 17: Ecosystems and Biogeochemical Cycles
17.1 How Is the Ecosystem Approach Useful in Understanding the Biosphere?
17.2 What Types of Organisms Inhabit Ecosystems?
17.3 What Types of Interactions Occur in Ecosystems?
17.4 How Do Populations Change in Ecosystems?
17.5 What Is Biodiversity and How Is It Assessed?
17.6 How Is Biodiversity Threatened and Why Is It Important?
17.7 How Does Energy Flow Through Ecosystems?
17.8 How Do We Describe Ecosystem Productivity?
17.9 How Do Ecosystems React to Disturbance?
17.10 What Is the Role of Carbon in Ecosystems?
17.11 What Is the Role of Nitrogen in Ecosystems?
17.12 What Is the Role of Phosphorus in Ecosystems?
17.13 How Does a Lack of Oxygen Harm Ecosystems?
17.14 What Is the Role of Sulfur in the Environment?
17.15 CONNECTIONS: How Do Invasive Species Impact U.S. Gulf Coast Ecosystems?
17.16 INVESTIGATION: What Factors Influence Desert Ecosystems of Namibia?
CHAPTER 18: Biomes
18.1 What Biomes Exist on Earth?
18.2 Where Are Each of the Biomes Found?
18.3 What Factors Influence Biome Distribution?
18.4 How Does Topography Influence Biomes?
18.5 What Characterizes the Rain Forest Biome?
18.6 How Are Tropical Rain Forests Threatened?
18.7 What Are Deserts and How Do They Form?
18.8 How Do Desert Organisms Survive?
18.9 What Are the Features of the Grassland Biome?
18.10 What Characterizes the Subtropical Scrub and Woodland Biome?
18.11 What Characterizes the Temperate Forest Biome?
18.12 What Characterizes the Boreal Forest Biome?
18.13 What Characterizes the Tundra Biome?
18.14 What Characterizes the Freshwater Biome?
18.15 What Ecosystems Exist in the Saltwater Biome?
18.16 How Do Animal Realms Overlap with Biomes?
18.17 What Are the Issues with Sustainability?
18.18 CONNECTIONS: How Do the Atmosphere, Hydrosphere, and Cryosphere Interact with Land to Form Biomes?
18.19 INVESTIGATION: What Factors Might Control the Biomes in This Location?
Appendix
Glossary
Credits
Index