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  1. Aerated Zone
    Region above the water table where pore spaces are not completely filled with water, and where water is held by capillarity.
  2. Aquifer
    A body of permeable rock or regolith saturated with water and through which groundwater moves.
  3. Braided Stream
    A channel system consisting of a tangled network of two or more smaller branching and reuniting channels that are separated by islands or bars.
  4. Channel
    The passageway in which stream flows.
  5. Condensation
    The formation of a more ordered liquid from a less ordered gas.
  6. Continental Divide
    A line that separates streams flowing towards opposite sides of a continent, usually into different oceans.
  7. Divide
    The line that separates adjacent drainage basins.
  8. Drainage Basin
    The total area that contributes water to a stream.
  9. Evaporation
    The process by which a liquid is converted to its vapor.
  10. Gradient
    A measure of the vertical drop over a given horizontal distance.
  11. Groundwater
    All the water contained in the spaces within bedrock and regolith.
  12. Hydrologic Cycle
    The movement of water between the various reservoirs of the hydrosphere.
  13. Hyrdosphere
    The totality of the Earth's water, including the oceans, lakes, streams, water underground, and all the snow and ice, including glaciers.
  14. Infiltration
    Water that falls as rain, then penetrates into the soil where it becomes part of the groundwater.
  15. Load
    The material that is moved or carried by a natural transporting agent, such as a stream, the wind, a glacier, or waves, tides, and currents.
  16. Meander
    A looplike bend of a stream channel.
  17. Percolation
    The flow of groundwater, including the vertical flow down from the surface and the lateral flow of water in the saturated zone.
  18. Permeability
    A measure of how easily a solid allows a fluid to pass through it.
  19. Recharge
    The addition of water to the saturated zone of a groundwater system.
  20. Saturated Zone
    The groundwater zone in which all openings are filled with water.
  21. Spring
    A flow of groundwater emerging naturally at the ground surface.
  22. Stream
    A body of water that carries detrital particles and dissolved substances and flows down a slope in a definite channel.
  23. Surface Runoff
    Water that drains off the surface of the land after rain.
  24. Transpiration
    Water vapor released from the surface of a leaf.
  25. Water Table
    The upper surface of the saturated zone of groundwater.
  26. Ablation
    The loss of mass from a glacier.
  27. Accumulation
    The additions of mass of a glaciers.
  28. Bed
    The smallest formal unit of a body of sediment or sedimentary rock.
  29. Calving
    The progressive breaking off of icebergs from a glacier that terminates in deep water.
  30. Cirque
    A bowl-shaped hollow on a mountainside, open downstream, bounded upstream by  a steep slope (headwall), and excavated mainly by frost wedging and by glacial abrasion and plucking.
  31. Crevasse
    A deep, gaping fissure in the upper surface of glacier.
  32. Cyrosphere
    The part of the Earth's surface that remains perennially frozen.
  33. Equilibrium line
    A line that marks the level on a glacier where net mass loss equals net gain.
  34. Fjord
    A deep, glacially carved valley submerged by the sea.
  35. Glaciation
    The modification of the land surface by the action of glacier ice.
  36. Glacier
    A permanent body of ice, consisting largely of recrystallized snow, that shows evidence of downslope or outward movement, due to the stress of its own weight.
  37. Glacier Ice
    Snow that gradually becomes denser and denser until it is no longer permeable to air.
  38. Ice
    The solid form of H2O
  39. Ice cap
    A mass of ice that covers mountain highlands, or low-lying lands in high latitudes.
  40. Ice sheet
    Continent-sized mass of ice that covers nearly all the land surface within its margins.
  41. Ice Shelf
    Floating sheets of ice, hundreds of meters thick, that occupy large embayments along the coast of Antarctica.
  42. Interglacial Period
    A time in the past when both the climate and global ice cover were similar to those of today.
  43. Moraine
    An accumulation of drift deposited beneath or at the margin of a glacier and having a surface form that is unrelated to the underlying bedrock.
  44. Periglacial
    A land area beyond the limit of glaciers where low temperature and frost action are important factors in determining landscape characteristics.
  45. Permafrost
    Sediment, soil, or bedrock that remains continuously at a temperature below 0oC for an extended time.
  46. Sea Ice
    A thin veneer of ice on polar oceans that covers approximately two-thirds of the area of the Earth's persistent ice cover.
  47. Snow
    Precipitation that consists of solid H2O in crystalline form.
  48. Terminus
    The outer, lower margin of a glacier.
  49. Beach
    Wave-washed sediment along a coast, extending throughout the surf zone.
  50. Coriolis Force
    An effect that causes any body that moves freely with respect to the rotating solid Earth to veer toward the right in the northern hemisphere and toward the left in the southern hemisphere, regardless of the initial direction of the moving body.
  51. Downwelling
    The process by which surface water thickens and sinks.
  52. Ekman Transport
    The average flow of water in a current over the full depth of the Ekman spiral.
  53. Emergence
    An increase in the area of land exposed above sea level resulting from uplift of the land and/or fall or sea level.
  54. Gyre
    A large subcircular current system of which each major ocean current is a part.
  55. Longshore Current
    A current, within the surf zone, that flows parallel to the coast.
  56. Reef
    A generally ridge-like structure composed chiefly of the calcareous remains of sedentary marine organisms such as corals and algae.
  57. Salinity
    The measure of the sea's saltiness; expressed in parts per thousand.
  58. Thermocline
    A zone of ocean water lying beneath the surface zone, characterized by a marked decrease in temperature.
  59. Thermohaline Circulation
    Global patterns of water circulation propelled by the sinking of dense cold salt water.
  60. Tide
    The twice-daily rise and fall of the ocean surface resulting from the gravitational attraction of the Moon and Sun.
  61. Upwelling
    The process by which subsurface waters flow upward and replace the water moving away.
  62. Wave Base
    The effective lower limit of wave motion, which is half of the wavelength.
  63. Wavelength
    The distance between the crests or troughs of adjacent waves.
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2013-05-14 20:13:19
Hydrosphere USU1360 001 Planet Earth

Hydrosphere study cards.
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