Glaciers, Deserts, and Soil Quiz

The ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica contain ____ percent of the world's ice.

• 25
• 75
• 50
• 99

Rocks embedded in the base of a glacier scrape across underlying bedrock, gouging parallel grooves and scratches called ____.

• crevasses
• erratics
• cirques
• striations

Glaciers-carved valleys are typically ____.

• v-shaped
• m-shaped
• u-shaped
• similar in appearance to valleys carved by steep mountain streams

The Pleistocene Glaciation began about ____ years ago.

• 15,000
• 2 million
• 20 million
• 250 million

A thick mass of ice that floats on the ocean surface but is connected to and fed from a glacier on land is called a(n) ____.

• ice shelf
• iceberg
• outwash plain
• fjord

During a glaciation event, _____.

• all of the continental land is covered by ice, but the oceans remain ice-free
• ice completely covers all of Earth’s continents and freezes the oceans
• the high latitudes are ice covered, but no glaciers exist near the equator
• alpine glaciers descend into lowlands and continental glaciers spread over the high-latitude surfaces

The world's deserts are similar only in that they all ____.

• receive small amounts (less than 25 centimeters) of rainfall each year
• has no vegetation
• have sandstone as the local bedrock
• are characterized by a landscape of buttes and mesas

Dry sinking air results in many of the world's deserts being located at ____ degrees south and north latitudes.

• 5
• 10
• 30
• 50

Glacial striations can be used to map the flow direction of glaciers.

• True
• False

Earthworms would most likely exist in which specific soil horizon which consists mostly of organic litter and humus, with a small portion of minerals? __________________

• B
• O
• C
• A