Geography 1700
Vocabulary – Week 2 (first set)
Aftershock –
Asthenosphere –
Attenuation or “distance decay” Block fault or “dip slip” Catastrophe – a very large disaster, often requiring years for recovery and usually affecting thousands of
people, sometimes across entire regions.
Convergent – either by subduction or by uplift.
Disaster – a hazardous event that occurs over a limited time span in a define area, resulting in 10 or
more people killed, and/or 100 people affected, involving a declaration of emergency and/or a request
for outside assistance.
Displacement – how much the earth moved. How many feet or inches a building moved, or how wide a
crack opened.
Divergent or riftDrought – substantially lower than normal precipitation during a season, an entire year or even longer.
Enough difference from normal to cause problems with crop production and/or require that people alter
normal habits in water consumption.
Epicenter and hypo-center or focus Forecast –
Foreshock –
Hotspot – as compared to a plate boundary.
Hydrologic cycle – evaporation of water, movement of water vapor by wind, condensation to form
clouds, and precipitation.
Intensity or ground motion (shaking) – compare to magnitude.
Liquefaction –
Magma -
Magnitude – the size of an event or process. Usually ranked or measured in terms of energy released.
Compare to intensity.
Modified Mercalli –
Moment Magnitude Mitigation – reduce the effect of something. Can include prevention before an event, or reducing the
cost of recovery after an event.
Natural hazard – a natural process and event that is a potential threat to human life and property.
P Wave (also S wave, and surface wave and “super shear”
Precursor Rebar – steel reinforcing rod – about ¼ inch to one inch in diameter – any length, inserted into wet
concrete to add tensile strength.
Retrofit Rock cycle – the process of creating rocks, wearing them down to dust and remaking dust into new
rocks. Energy for the rock cycle comes from a combination of solar radiation and tectonic movement.
New rocks are formed by any of many processes: erosion, dissolution, fracturing, sedimentation,
cementation, heat, pressure, and so on.
Rock types: igneous, metamorphic, sedimentary
Slip-strike (transform)
Subduction –
Supershear Tectonic plates – large surface blocks of solid earth; tectonics refers to large-scale geologic processes
that deform Earth’s crust and produce landforms such as ocean basins, continents, and mountains. The
tectonic cycle involves the creation, movement and destruction of tectonic plates. Energy for tectonic
cycles comes from radioactive decay deep within the Earth. The geologic cycle includes tectonics, rock
cycle, hydrologic cycle and biologic cycle.
Tensile – resistance to stretching or pulling apart, as compared to compression or pushing together
Uplift – “convergent uplift”