Earth Science

BIOGEOCHEMICAL CYCLES

CONCEPT Of the 92 elements produced in nature, only six are critical to the life of organisms: hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur. Though these elements account for 95% of the mass of all living things, their importance extends far beyond the biosphere. Hydrogen and oxygen, chemically bonded in the form of water, are […]

SOIL CONSERVATION

CONCEPT With the rise of the environmentalist movement in the 1960s and afterward, it has become common to speak of conserving natural resources such as trees or fossil fuels. Yet long before humans recognized the need to make responsible use of things taken from the ground, they learned to conserve the ground itself—that is, the […]

SOIL

CONCEPT If there is anything on Earth that seems simple and ordinary, it is the soil beneath our feet. Other than farmers, people hardly think of it except when tending to their lawns, and even when we do turn our attention to the soil, we tend to view it as little more than a place […]

SEDIMENT AND SEDIMENTATION

CONCEPT The materials that make up Earth are each products of complex cycles and interactions, as a study of sediment and sedimentation shows. Sediment is unconsolidated material deposited at or near Earth’s surface from a number of sources, most notably preexisting rock. There are three kinds of sediment: chemical, organic, and rock, or clastic sediment. […]

MASS WASTING

CONCEPT The term mass wasting (sometimes called mass movement) encompasses a broad array of processes whereby earth material is transported down a slope by the force of gravity. It is related closely to weathering, which is the breakdown of minerals or rocks at or near Earth’s surface through physical, chemical, or biological processes, and to […]

EROSION

CONCEPT Erosion is a broadly defined group of processes involving the movement of soil and rock. This movement is often the result of flowing agents, whether wind, water, or ice, which sometimes behaves like a fluid in the large mass of a glacier. Gravitational pull may also influence erosion. Thus, erosion, as a concept in […]

MOUNTAINS

CONCEPT Among the most striking of geologic features are mountains, created by several types of tectonic forces, including collisions between continental masses. Mountains have long had an impact on the human psyche, for instance by virtue of their association with the divine in the Greek myths, the Bible, and other religious or cultural traditions. One […]

GEOMORPHOLOGY

CONCEPT The surface of Earth is covered with various landforms, a number of which are discussed in various entries throughout this topic. This essay is devoted to the study of landforms themselves, a subdiscipline of the geologic sciences known as geomorphology. The latter, as it has evolved since the end of the nineteenth century, has […]

SEISMOLOGY

CONCEPT Disturbances within Earth’s interior, which is in a constant state of movement, result in the release of energy in packets known as seismic waves. An area of geophysics known as seismology is the study of these waves and their effects, which often can be devastating when experienced in the form of earthquakes. The latter […]

PLATE TECTONICS

CONCEPT The earth beneath our feet is not dead; it is constantly moving, driven by forces deep in its core. Nor is the planet’s crust all of one piece; it is composed of numerous plates, which are moving steadily in relation to one another. This movement is responsible for all manner of phenomena, including earthquakes, […]