Physical Geography: Landforms

Exam Review Sheet

Important Class Resource Links

EXAM 1

EXAM 2

EXAM 3

EXAM 4

FINAL EXAM

EXAM 1

INTRODUCTION (If questions are red-lined, ignore them)

1. If you have a question about the class, consult the syllabus or talk to me!
2. What are the most common parts of most scientific methods and how are they used?
3. How and why are facts, hypotheses and theories different from each other?
4. What are mountains, ridges, valleys, basins, and slopes and why could we consider these as the most basic generic landforms?
5. What are the internal processes that affect landforms and what are their effects on the surface?
6. What are the external processes that affect landforms and what are their effects on the surface?
7. What is a system?
8. How does the movement of energy, mass, or information vary across the boundaries of open, closed, or isolated systems?
9. What is input-output analysis and how do the amount of input and output determine the change in the amount stored in a system?
10. What are positive and negative feedback and how do they affect the operation of systems (its equilibrium)?
11. What is the relationship of frequency and magnitude?
12. What are thresholds and disturbances and how do they affect system operation?
13. What is equilibrium?
14. What are stable equilibrium, steady-state equilibrium, dynamic equilibrium, and dynamic metastable equilibrium and how do they describe the change in system operation over time?

MINERALOGY

IGNEOUS ROCKS

WEATHERING

1. What are the internal earth processes that build the surface?

2. What are the external earth processes that wear the surface away?

3. Where does weathering occur?

4. What is mechanical (physical) weathering and how does it change rock?

5. What is chemical weathering and how does it change rock?

6. How and why do the following types of mechanical (physical) weathering affect rock and sediment: stress release, frost action/hydro-fracturing, salt weathering, thermal expansion, hydration (slaking) and organic action?

7. How and why does physical weathering alter a rock to make it more susceptible to chemical weathering?

8. How and why do the following types of chemical weathering affect rock and sediment: solution, hydrolysis, and oxidation?

9. Which rocks are most susceptible to chemical weathering?

10. How do chemical and mechanical (physical) weathering interact?

11. How and why do intrinsic factors such as mineral composition, porosity, texture and structure affect the rate of weathering?

12. How and why do extrinsic factors such as climate, water table position, topography (slope angle and aspect), and humans affect the rate of weathering?

13. What are regolith and soil?

14. What are duricrusts such as caliche and laterites, how are they created and how do they influence landforms?

MASS MOVEMENT

1. What is mass wasting?

2. What is the relationship between slope stability (FS - factor of safety), driving force (DF), and resisting force (RF)?

3. What is the relationship between slope stability (FS), RF, weight, slope, normal stress, friction and cohesion?

4. What is the relationship between slope stability, DF, weight, and slope angle?

5. What are the different types of friction and how do they affect slope stability?

6. How and why does friction affect the angle of repose (slope angle)?

7. How does rock strength affect slope angle?

8. How and why do rock and soil strength, structure, weathering, water, and vegetation affect the resistance of slopes?

9. How and why do earthquakes, regional tilting, removal of underlying or lateral support, addition of mass and human actions affect the driving forces that act on slopes?

10. How are type of movement and type of material used to classify mass movement?

11. How does one distinguish between falls, slides and flows?

12. How and why do rockfalls occur?

13. How and why are rockfalls associated with talus slopes and rock cliffs?

14. How and why do translational slides form and move?

15. What landforms are associated with translational slides?

16. How and why do rotational slides form and move?

17. What landforms are associated with rotational slides?

18. What is the difference between granular and slurry flows?

19. How and why do debris flows form and what association do they have with landforms?

20. What is soil creep and how does it occur?

21. What landforms are associated with soil creep?

22. How does climate influence hillslope evolution?

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FINAL EXAM

Groundwater 

1. What is hydrologic cycle, what are the parts of the cycle (evaporation, precipitation, runoff, etc), and how do they shift water from reservoir to the next?

2. What is porosity and how and why does it vary?

3. What is permeability and how does it affect the movement of groundwater?

4. What are the saturated zone, the water table, and the unsaturated zones and why do they occur?

5. What are aquifers and aquicludes; where do they occur and why do they occur?

6. What makes a good aquifer?

7. What are confined aquifers and unconfined aquifers and how are they different?

8. What is infiltration and how is it related to overland flow and to groundwater recharge?

9. How does water move in the unsaturated zone?

10. How does water move in the saturated zone?

11. How does the water table change with time and how does that affect streams and lakes?

12. How does the water table differ in humid as opposed to arid regions?

KARST 

1. What conditions are necessary for the creation of karst features and why?

2. By what process does groundwater dissolve limestone?

3. What are the main factors that control the shape of subsurface caverns?

4. How do speleothems (dripstone) form?

5. How are the different types of dolines created?

6. How are the different types of karst valleys created?

7. How is labyrinth and tower karst created?

SURFACEWATER 

1. What is a drainage basin (watershed) and how is it distinguished from other basins?
2. What are drainage basin inputs and outputs and how are they affected by the controls on drainage basins?

3. What are the types of drainage patterns and how are they related to the underlying soils, rock type and geologic structure?

4. How do the duration of precipitation, intensity of precipitation, soil moisture, soil temperature, snow, slope, soil texture, soil condition and vegetation cover affect affect infiltration and why?

5. How and why is infiltration tied to overland flow, soil erosion, rills, and gullies?

6. What variables describe channel geometry?

7. How and why do slope, roughness and channel shape affect stream velocity?

8. How and why does velocity vary within channels of different sizes, cross-sections and shapes?

9. What is stream discharge and how is it related to channel size and velocity?

10. What is baseflow and how is it related to groundwater and infiltration?

11. What are abrasion, solution, hydraulic action and cavitation and how do streams use them to erode rock and sediment?

12. What are capacity and competence?

13. How do discharge and velocity affect capacity and competence?

14. How do capacity and competence affect erosion, deposition and sediment load?

15. What are dissolved load, suspended load and bedload, why do they occur and how are they distributed in a stream?

16. How and why does a stream channel cross-section change during a flood?

17. What are nickpoints, v-shaped valleys and potholes?

18. How and why do streams create nickpoints, v-shaped valleys and potholes?

19. What are channel bars, floodplains, natural levees, backswamps, yazoo rivers?

20. How and why do streams create floodplains, natural levees, backswamps, yazoo rivers?

21. What are meanders, point bars, cut-off meanders, oxbow lakes and meander scars?

22. How and why do streams create meanders, point bars, cut-off meanders, oxbow lakes and meander scars?

23. How and why do streams create stream terraces?

24. How and why do streams create deltas when they enter oceans, lakes or, occasionally, other rivers.

25. How and why do streams create alluvial fans when they exit narrow v-shaped valleys?

26. How and why do lakes change with time?

27. What are straight, braided, meandering or anastomosing shapes and how are they related to slope and sediment load?

28. How and why do down-cutting, headward erosion, lateral erosion and river extension expand a valley?

29. What is longitudinal profile of a stream and how does it change downstream?

30. How and why is cross-section of a stream change from the upstream to the midstream to the far downstream section?

31. How does a stream change to match its environment and why does it do so?

GLACIATION 

1. What are valley and continental glaciation and how are they different?

2. What distinguishes a glacier from a sheet of ice?

3. How and why does snow become glacial ice?

4. How is the glacial budget used to divide a glacier into the zone of accumulation, equilibrium line and the zone of wastage?

5. What is the glacial budget, how does it affect the size of a glacier, and how does it affect the location of the terminus?

6. What determines the direction of the flow of glacial ice?

7. What are plastic flow and basal slip, why do they occur, and when do they occur?

8. How does flow vary within a glacial cross-section

9. How and why do crevasses occur?

10. How do glaciers cause abrasion, fracture, plucking, and meltwater erosion?

11. What are cirques, horns, u-shaped valleys, arêtes, hanging valleys, and striations, and how are they created?

12. How is erosion associated with continental glaciation different from valley glaciation?

13. How does a glacier entrain sediment?

14. What are till, outwash, rock flour and loess and how do glaciers create these different sediments?

15. What are end moraines, terminal moraines, recessional moraines, ground moraine, lateral moraines, medial moraines, and interlobate moraines and how are they created?

16. What are drumlins and how are they created?

17. What are kames, moulin kames, and eskers and how are they created?

18. What depositional features do you expect to find in an outwash plain and why?

19. What are kettles and how are they created?

20. What are glacial lakes and how are they created?

21. How has glaciation arranged the largest features of the North American landscape such as river systems, aquifers, loess areas, lakes, the general elevation of the surface, and farmland areas, and how did it occur?

EXAMS 1 – 4 

1. What are the 4 major types of silicates and how do they differ in terms of total amount of silica, formation temperature, and weathering susceptibility?
2. How and why does partial melting create felsic, intermediate, or mafic magma from the same rock?

3. What is the arrangement, composition and behavior of earth’s interior from the crust to the core?

4. How and why do different rates of cooling create fine, coarse, porphyritic, glassy, vesicular, and pyroclastic textures?
5. How is sediment size, shape and sorting affected by transportation and energy of transport?
6. How and why does water affect the rate of metamorphosis?
7. What are regional and contact metamorphism and what is their relation to plate tectonics?
8. What is the general arrangement, temperature, pressure and composition of the oceanic crust, continental crust, mantle, outer core, and the inner core?
9. Where does oceanic crust form and where is it destroyed?
10. Where does continental crust form?

11. What events make the beginning and end of each of the three stages of mountain building?

12. How and why do tension, compression and shear change the shape of rock?
13. What are the elastic, plastic and brittle strain and how does a rock show the effects of each?
14. What types of stress and strain cause normal, reverse, thrust, and strike-slip faults?
15. What are dendritic, parallel, trellis, rectangular, and annular drainage and what types of structures result in their formation?

16. What types of stresses, folds, faults, volcanoes and earthquakes are associated with each plate boundary?

17. How and why do intrinsic factors such as mineral composition, porosity, texture and structure affect the rate of weathering?

18. How and why do extrinsic factors such as climate, water table position, topography (slope angle and aspect), and humans affect the rate of weathering?