After completing this chapter, the student should:
Appreciate the Earth as a system comprising both physicochemical and biological components and begin to see how this perspective provides important insights into how current and future environmental changes may affect us.
Understand some of the unifying concepts of geology, including actualism and the principle of uniformitarianism.
Be able to describe the three basic kinds of rocks (igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic) and how they are formed.
Be able to define Steno's three laws of sedimentary rocks: the principles of superposition, original horizontality, and original lateral continuity.
Be able to discuss the rock cycle and the two principles for recognizing its steps: the principle of intrusive relationships and the principle of components.
Understand erosion surfaces-unconformities, angular unconformities, disconformities, and nonconformities-and be able to describe how they differ.
Know how geologists piece together the history of the Earth on a global scale, including the role of fossils, radioactive dating, and the development of the geologic time scale.
Be able to define the zones of Earth's interior-core, mantle, and crust-and the division of the crust and upper mantle into the lithosphere and asthenosphere.
Appreciate the role of the plate-tectonic theory in revolutionizing the field of geology and know the basics of plate tectonics, including the distribution of plates over Earth's surface, the various types of plate boundaries (spreading zones, subduction zones, transform faults), and how plate tectonics relates to the rock cycle.
Understand the basics of the water cycle and its interactions with the rock cycle.
Be able to discuss Darwin's theory of organic evolution and its relationship to uniformitarianism.
Know how some of the Earth's physical and chemical features have changed over geologic time, including the cooling of the Earth and the increase in the concentration of oxygen in Earth's atmosphere.
Be able to define an ecosystem.
Understand episodic changes over Earth's history, such as catastrophic deposition of sediments and mass extinctions of species.