Geography -Glossary of Geographical terms
Magma: Molten rock containing liquids, crystals, and dissolved gases that forms within the upper part of the Earth’s mantle and crust. When erupted onto the Earth’s surface, it is called lava.
Mediterranean climate: A climate characterized by moist, mild winters and hot, dry summers.
Mesquite: A spiny deep-rooted leguminous tree or shrub that forms extensive thickets in the southwestern United States
Metamorphic Rock: Rock that has been physically altered by heat and/or pressure
Maritime climate: A climate strongly influenced by an oceanic environment, found on islands and the windward shores of continents. It is characterized by small daily and yearly temperature ranges and high relative humidity.
Mantle: A zone in the Earth’s interior between the crust and the core that is 2,900 kilometers (1,800 mi) thick. (The lithosphere is composed of the topmost 65-70 kilometers (39–42 miles) of the mantle and the crust.)
Moraine: The rocks and soil carried and deposited by a glacier. An “end moraine,” either a ridge or low hill running perpendicular to the direction of ice movement, forms at the end of a glacier when the ice is melting.
Nodal Region: A region characterized by a set of places connected to another place by lines of communication or movement.
Nuclear family: A family of your closer relatives; mom, dad, brother(s), sister(s), and possibly your aunt(s), uncle(s), and cousin(s).
New England: The northeastern United States.
Orographic rainfall: Precipitation that results when moist air is lifted over a topographic barrier such as a mountain range.
Ocean: The salt water surrounding the great land masses, and divided by the land masses into several distinct portions, each of which is called an ocean.
Physiographic region: A portion of the Earth’s surface with a common topography and common morphology.
Prevailing winds: The direction from which winds most frequently blow at a specific geographic location
Prime Meridian: An imaginary line running from north to south through Greenwich, England, used as the reference point for longitude.
Primary sector: That portion of a region’s economy devoted to the extraction of basic materials (e.g., mining, lumbering, agriculture).
Precambrian rock: The oldest rocks, generally more than 600 million years old.
Pleistocene: The period the last one million years in geologic history when ice sheets covered large sections of the Earth’s land surface not now covered by glaciers.
Plate Tectonics: Geologic theory that the bending (folding) and breaking (faulting) of the solid surface of the earth results from the slow movement of large sections (plates) of that surface.
Palisades: A line of bold cliffs.