Material on Exam III: (This is an outline, your notes from class are more detailed with diagrams and references to material in the lecture textbook, lab manual, and web resources):

Part V: RELATIVE AND ABSOLUTE DATING, AND INTERPRETING GEOLOGIC HISTORIES (Chp. 10).

A. Relative Dating.

1. Law of Superposition.
2. Cross-cutting relationships.

B. Interpreting Geologic Histories.

1. Relative dating methods.
2. Use examples of processes and relationships in the modern world: Uniformitarianism (present is the key to understanding the past).

C. Geologic Time.

1. Early beliefs
2. First scientific determinations.
3. Radioactive age determinations.

Radioactive elements (isotopes), daughter elements, half lives.

4. Geologic Time.

• Major events in Earth history.

5. How is time recorded in sediments and sedimentary rocks?

6. Unconformities.

Disconformity, Angular unconformity, and Nonconformity

Part VI: EARTH SURFACE PROCESSES.

A. Mass Wasting (chapter 13 in textbook):

1. Causes.
2. Types of Events: Landslides Vs Flows.
   
   
   • Creep
   • Avalanches and landslides

B. Hydrologic Cycle (page 356-359 in textbook):

1. Processes
2. Relative size of reservoirs

C. Streams (chapter 14 in textbook):

1. Source (headwaters) Vs mouth.
2. Alluvial fans
3. Braided Vs Meandering streams:
   • flow characteristics
   • gradient
   • velocity
   • discharge
   • turbulent nature of flow
   • Competency:
     
   • Transportation Mechanisms:
     • dissolved load
     • suspended load
     • bed load
       
       
4. Types of streams
5. Floods:
   • processes
   • urbanization
   • predictions
     
     
6. Drainage basins.

D. Groundwater (chapter 16 in textbook):

1. Terms/definitions
2. How does it flow?
3. Aquifers/Aquitards
4. Groundwater flow and contamination
5. Caves

 

Part VII. Plate Tectonics II.

A. Geologic Structures (Chapter 9 in textbook).

1. Folds, fractures, and faults.

2. Form in response to stress.

a. Compressional.
b. Tensional.
c. Shear.

3. How rocks respond to stress depends on:

a. Type of stress.
b. Amount
c. Rate of change.
d. Nature of the rocks.

4. Response to Stress = strain.

5. Types of Structures.

a. Folds

• synclines
• anticlines

b. Faults.

• classified based on the type of movement