Earth Systems Science
Final Exam Questions
Course Introduction
Earth Systems Science is an interdisciplinary course that explores the dynamic interactions among the atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, and geosphere that make up our planets environment. Students will examine the fundamental principles that govern Earths physical and biological processes, analyze the cycles and feedback mechanisms connecting Earths spheres, and investigate the impact of natural and human-induced changes on global systems. Through case studies, modeling, and hands-on activities, learners gain a holistic understanding of how Earth functions as an integrated system and how these interactions influence climate, ecosystems, and human societies.
Recommended Textbook
Foundations of Earth Science 7th Edition by Frederick K. Lutgens
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Chapter 1: Matter and Minerals
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Sample Questions
Q1) Which of the following best defines the relationship between minerals and rocks?
A)A rock has an orderly, repetitive, geometrical, internal arrangement of minerals; a mineral is a lithified or consolidated aggregate of rocks.
B)A mineral consists of atoms arranged in a geometrically repetitive structure; in a rock, the atoms are randomly bonded without any geometric pattern.
C)In a mineral, atoms are bonded in a regular, repetitive, internal structure; a rock is a lithified or consolidated aggregate of mineral grains.
D)A rock consists of atoms bonded in a regular, geometrically predictable arrangement; a mineral is a consolidated aggregate of rock particles.
Answer: C
Q2) Two feldspar samples are placed before you. Sample A is gray and shows striations on its surface, and Sample B is pink-colored, like fresh salmon. Sample A must be ________ and Sample B is likely to be ________. Answer: plagioclase feldspar; potassium feldspar (orthoclase)
Q3) The most common group of minerals in Earth's crust are the ________. Answer: silicates
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Page 3
Chapter 2: Rocks: Materials of the Solid Earth
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Q1) Mud cracks and ripple marks are common features of igneous rocks.
A)True
B)False
Answer: False
Q2) The reason we see so much mud and sand along the shore of the land is that clay minerals and quartz are ________ at Earth's surface.
Answer: stable
Q3) All metamorphic rocks began as other rocks ("parent rocks")that were then subjected to elevated temperatures or pressures.
A)True
B)False
Answer: True
Q4) The rock ________ is a description of how one rock may be transformed into another kind of rock through various internal and external processes.
Answer: cycle
Q5) The difference between a breccia and a conglomerate is ________.
Answer: conglomerates have rounded grains; breccias have angular grains
Q6) A detrital sedimentary rock dominated by sand is a(n)________.
Answer: sandstone
4
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Chapter 3: Landscapes Fashioned by Water
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Sample Questions
Q1) Plants consume water during photosynthesis. They also release it to the atmosphere during ________.
A)evaporation
B)degassing
C)transpiration
D)infiltration
Answer: C
Q2) Rapids and waterfalls are more likely in ________.
A)a V-shaped valley
B)a meandering stream
C)a braided stream
D)a delta
Answer: A
Q3) Groundwater can be a source of surface runoff.
A)True
B)False
Answer: True
Q4) Drawdown of groundwater due to heavy pumping from a well may result in a(n)________, a "dimple" in the water table.
Answer: cone of depression
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Chapter 4: Glacial and Arid Landscapes
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Sample Questions
Q1) How do glaciers move?
A)They slide along their bottoms, over the bedrock beneath.
B)They flow internally, like Silly Putty.
C)Both A and B
D)Neither A nor B
Q2) Where are drumlins formed?
A)in areas of alpine glaciation
B)in areas of ground moraine
C)in fiords
D)in areas of glacial plucking
Q3) About what percentage of Earth's land surface was covered by glaciers during the Quaternary period?
A)3%
B)15%
C)30%
D)55%
Q4) Glaciers are powerful agents of erosion and deposition, and during the Quaternary Ice Age, these flowing masses of ice reshaped much of the North American continent. Discuss three of the effects of Ice Age glaciers that are NOT related to erosion or deposition.
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Chapter 5: Plate Tectonics: A Scientific Revolution Unfolds
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Sample Questions
Q1) Although several plausible models have been proposed, scientists haven't yet figured out the exact pattern of convection in Earth's mantle.
A)True
B)False
Q2) 1)lithosphere
2)asthenosphere
3)convergent
4)divergent
5)transform
6)normal polarity
7)reversed polarity
8)convection
Q3) The South Atlantic basin is widening by seafloor spreading. Africa and South America are moving ________.
Q4) Hawaii is the oldest island of the Hawaiian Island chain.
A)True
B)False
Q5) The ________ is weaker and less rigid than the overlying lithosphere.
Q6) The ________ is Earth's outermost rocky layer that is broken into plates.
Page 7
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Chapter 6: Restless Earth: Earthquakes, Geologic Structures, and Mountain Building
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Sample Questions
Q1) Sketch a cross-sectional view of Earth's interior, and label each of the layers you depict.
Q2) During an earthquake near Port Royal, Jamaica, the water-saturated sand on which the city was built vigorously shook. As a result, the sand particles lost contact with one another, giving the mixture the consistency of a thick milk shake. Anything supported by the ground, such as buildings and people, either floated or sank. One eyewitness stated: "Whole streets with inhabitants were swallowed up. . . . Some were swallowed quite down, and cast up again by great quantities of water; others went down and were never more seen." This is a description of ________.
A)liquefaction
B)tsunami
C)landslide
D)subsidence
Q3) The North American Cordillera consists of many terranes which bear magnetic and fossil evidence suggesting they originated far to the south of the modern-day positions.
A)True
B)False
Q4) ________ are destructive sea waves induced by earthquakes.
Page 8
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Chapter 7: Volcanoes and Other Igneous Activity
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Q1) Water vapor is the most abundant gaseous component dissolved in most magmas.
A)True
B)False
Q2) The most violent volcanic activity is associated with ________.
A)the Mid-Atlantic Ridge
B)composite volcanoes
C)cinder cones
D)shield volcanoes
Q3) Imagine that you have a friend moving to a new area on the North American continent where there is a subduction zone offshore. What sorts of volcanoes would be most likely in this setting? Which volcanic hazards should you warn your friend to be alert for?
Q4) Magma tends to rise toward Earth's surface principally because ________.
A)water is an abundant constituent of magma
B)silica increases the viscosity of the magma
C)rocks become less dense when they melt
D)of convection in the mantle
Q5) A small, igneous rock body emplaced at shallow depths by uplift and arching of the overlying, older strata is a(n)________.
Page 9
Q6) The Year Without A Summer (1816)was triggered by ________.
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Chapter 8: Geologic Time
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Sample Questions
Q1) Most sedimentary rocks cannot be dated directly by ________ methods.
Q2) Which of the following is an essential characteristic of an index fossil?
A)The organism lived in a very specific environment or two, such as tropical volcanic islands.
B)The organism lived for a very limited period of geologic time.
C)The fossils of the organism are exceptionally well preserved.
D)The organism lived on the land, not in the ocean.
Q3) Alpha emission, beta emission, and electron capture are three different kinds of radioactive decay.
A)True
B)False
Q4) The remains or traces of prehistoric life are called ________.
Q5) Who first formulated the principle of uniformitarianism?
A)Aristotle
B)Lyell
C)Steno
D)Hutton
Q6) The Phanerozoic, Proterozoic, and Archean are all eons.
A)True
B)False
Page 10
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Chapter 9: Oceans: The Last Frontier
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Q1) 1)oceanography
2)salinity
3)thermocline
4)pycnocline
5)bathymetry
6)terrigenous
7)hydrogenous
8)biogenous
Q2) Minerals that crystallize directly from seawater are examples of ________ sediment.
Q3) The Atlantic and Pacific basins have oceanic ridges but the Indian Ocean has no oceanic ridge.
A)True
B)False
Q4) The deep-ocean basin makes up about 5% of the ocean floor's area.
A)True
B)False
Q5) ________ is the total amount of solid material dissolved in water.
Q6) The salts in seawater come both from the weathering of the continents and ________ by submarine volcanoes.
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Chapter 10: The Restless Ocean
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Q1) If uplift of the land occurs, a wave-cut platform may become a new ________.
Q2) In the Northern Hemisphere, the Coriolis effect causes surface currents in the ocean to be deflected slightly ________ compared to the winds that cause them.
A)to the left
B)to the right
C)to the north
D)to the south
Q3) Spring tides occur in conjunction with the full Moon or the new Moon.
A)True
B)False
Q4) ________ are huge circular-moving current systems that dominate the surface of the ocean within an ocean basin.
A)Tombolos
B)Gyres
C)Coriolis
D)Upwellings
Q5) ________ are large circular-moving currents of water within an ocean basin.
Q6) ________ are low-lying zones that are alternately covered by water during flood tide and exposed following ebb tide.
Page 12
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Chapter 11: Heating the Atmosphere
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Sample Questions
Q1) A field covered with several inches of freshly-fallen snow has a high albedo.
A)True
B)False
Q2) All places at the same ________ have identical Sun angles and lengths of daylight.
Q3) Closely spaced isotherms indicate a high ________.
Q4) Even though ground-level ozone is a health hazard, the "ozone layer" in the stratosphere is a health benefit because ________.
A)it stops global warming
B)it reduces thunderstorms
C)it screens out some harmful solar radiation
D)it absorbs certain wavelengths of infrared radiation that are emitted by Earth's surface
Q5) Compare and contrast weather and climate.
Q6) ________ is the agent of atmospheric temperature change.
A)Heat
B)Starlight
C)Gravity
D)Pressure
Q7) Ozone is concentrated in the middle part of the ________.
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Chapter 12: Moisture, Clouds, and Precipitation
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Sample Questions
Q1) What unusual situation can occur in the absence of condensation nuclei?
A)adiabatic warming
B)a relative humidity of more than 100%
C)cumulonimbus clouds
D)cirrostratus clouds
Q2) Radar is capable of measuring how much precipitation is falling in a given location from as much as several hundred kilometers' distance away.
A)True
B)False
Q3) Why is the vertical movement of air critical to the formation of clouds and precipitation? What role do adiabatic temperature changes play in these processes?
Q4) On a warm summer day, you go outside and feel fat, cold raindrops splashing on your hands. On a winter day, you go outside and notice fat, fluffy snowflakes piling up on top of your mittens. Compare and contrast the mechanisms by which these two kinds of precipitation were produced.
Q5) Any open container having a consistent cross-sectional area throughout can be used as a(n)________.
Q6) ________ is a type of fog that forms in valleys at night.
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Chapter 13: The Atmosphere in Motion
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Q1) ________ of air occurs near Earth's surface around an anticyclone.
Q2) When the pressure gradient force is balanced by the Coriolis force, high altitude ________ move parallel to isobars.
A)monsoons
B)geostrophic winds
C)valley breezes
D)chinooks
Q3) A(n)________ provides a rough indication of wind speed and direction, though it's not as precise as a cup anemometer paired with a wind vane.
Q4) The jet stream is a surface wind feature.
A)True
B)False
Q5) Standard sea level pressure is ________.
A)about 1084 mb (32.01 inches of mercury)
B)about 1013 mb (29.92 inches of mercury)
C)about 902 mb (26.71 inches of mercury)
D)about 870 mb (25.70 inches of mercury)
Q6) Chinook and Santa Ana winds are warm, dry winds created when air descends the leeward side of a mountain and ________ by compression.
Page 15
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Chapter 14: Weather Patterns and Severe Weather
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Q1) Occluded fronts form because ________.
A)of the Coriolis effect
B)cold fronts travel at a faster rate than do warm fronts
C)warm fronts travel at a faster rate than do cold fronts
D)air movement is parallel to the front
Q2) ________ refers to the situation where a warm air glides up along the edge of a cold air mass.
Q3) Which part of a hurricane has the most intense winds?
A)divergence aloft
B)counterclockwise rain bands (clockwise in the southern hemisphere)
C)eye wall
D)eye
Q4) Hurricanes most often develop in late winter.
A)True
B)False
Q5) Cold fronts are about twice as ________ as warm fronts and move more rapidly, too. These two factors mean warm air is forced aloft more rapidly, and more dramatic weather is produced.
Q6) Summarize the factors that lead to the development, growth, and decay of hurricanes.
Page 16
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Chapter 15: The Nature of the Solar System
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Sample Questions
Q1) ________ are small, extraterrestrial particles that glow brightly and burn up as they travel through Earth's atmosphere.
A)Meteoroids
B)Moons
C)Meteorites
D)Asteroids
Q2) Carbon dioxide is the major gas in the atmosphere of Venus.
A)True
B)False
Q3) Neptune is the first planet beyond the Asteroid Belt, with Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus following beyond that, each further away from the Sun.
A)True
B)False
Q4) Epicycles are a feature of the modern conception of a heliocentric solar system.
A)True
B)False
Q5) The Martian polar caps are thought to be mainly frozen methane and ammonia. A)True
B)False
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Chapter 16: Beyond Our Solar System
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Q1) Smallest white dwarves have the largest mass.
A)True
B)False
Q2) "Red shift" refers to the tendency of stars to cool over time and thus to become red in color.
A)True
B)False
Q3) If a star ends its life cycle as a black hole, that implies it has a(n)________ mass.
Q4) If the universe is sufficiently dense, gravity will someday pull it all back together in an event called ________, sort of like the big bang in reverse.
Q5) When galaxies collide, each of the individual stars in one galaxy will smash into an equivalent star in the second galaxy.
A)True
B)False
Q6) Some of the largest and the smallest galaxies are elliptical in shape.
A)True
B)False
Q7) A star's ________ can be determined from its color.
Page 18
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