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Browse Qlopedia topics grouped under Earth Science.
121 topics, showing 97-120 on page 5 of 6.
Wetlands are places where water shapes the soil, plants, and animal life. They may be wet all year or only seasonally, and they can store floodwater, filter pollutants, recharge groundwater, protect shorelines, support biodiversity, and lock away carbon.
Soil health describes how well soil functions as a living ecosystem that supports plants, animals, water, climate, and people. Healthy soil stores and cycles nutrients, holds water, resists erosion, supports roots and microbes, and can make farms and landscapes more resilient.
Ecosystem services are the benefits people receive from functioning ecosystems. They include food, fresh water, pollination, flood protection, climate regulation, recreation, cultural meaning, and the ecological processes that keep these benefits available over time.
Yellowstone National Park is a protected landscape in the western United States, famous for geysers, hot springs, wildlife, volcanic geology, Indigenous history, and the idea that public lands can preserve ecosystems while welcoming visitors.
The water cycle, also called the hydrologic cycle, is the continuous movement and storage of water through the atmosphere, oceans, land, ice, groundwater, rivers, living things, and human-built systems.
Volcanoes are openings and landforms where molten rock, gas, ash, and fragmented material reach the surface from inside Earth. They can build islands and mountains, create fertile soils, reveal how tectonic plates move, threaten communities, affect climate, and remind us that Earth is still geologically alive.
Victoria Falls is the dramatic waterfall on the Zambezi River at the border of Zambia and Zimbabwe, where water plunges into a narrow basalt gorge and reveals the power of rivers, geology, seasonal flow, tourism, and shared heritage.
An urban heat island is a pattern in which built-up areas are warmer than surrounding rural or less developed areas. Roads, roofs, buildings, limited vegetation, waste heat, and urban form all affect how cities absorb, store, and release heat. The result can worsen heat stress, energy demand, air pollution, and inequality.
Uluru is the great sandstone monolith in Australia's Red Centre, a sacred Aแนangu place within Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park where geology, desert ecology, law, story, tourism, and joint management meet.
The Sahara Desert is the vast hot desert across North Africa, shaped by aridity, wind, rock, sand seas, mountains, oases, dust storms, human routes, fragile ecosystems, and long climate changes between wetter and drier worlds.
Recycling collects and processes materials that would otherwise become waste, turning them into inputs for new products. It can conserve resources, save energy, reduce landfill use, and support jobs, but it works best as part of a larger waste hierarchy that prioritizes reducing, reusing, repairing, and buying durable goods first.
Ocean currents are organized movements of seawater driven by wind, Earth's rotation, gravity, tides, and differences in temperature and salinity. They move heat, nutrients, carbon, organisms, ships, pollutants, and floating debris, making them central to climate, marine life, weather, and human activity at sea.
The ocean is the vast, connected body of salt water that covers most of Earth, stores heat and carbon, shapes weather, supports marine life, feeds communities, carries trade, and links climate, biodiversity, economies, and coastal safety into one global system.
Niagara Falls is the famous waterfall system on the Niagara River between the United States and Canada, where Great Lakes water, glacial geology, erosion, hydropower, tourism, and cross-border management converge.
Mount Everest is Earth's highest mountain above sea level, rising on the border between Nepal and Tibet in the Himalayas, where tectonic collision, extreme altitude, glaciers, weather, and human ambition meet.
Microplastics are tiny plastic particles, usually defined as less than five millimeters across, that come from manufactured small plastics and the breakdown of larger plastic waste, spreading through water, soil, air, wildlife, and human environments.
Mangroves are salt-tolerant trees and shrubs that grow where land and sea meet in tropical and subtropical regions. Their roots stabilize shorelines, shelter young marine life, store carbon-rich sediments, and help coastal communities face storms and erosion.
Hurricanes are powerful tropical cyclones that form over warm ocean water and can bring destructive winds, heavy rain, storm surge, flooding, and coastal damage. Understanding how they form and how warnings work helps communities prepare before landfall.
The Great Barrier Reef is the vast coral reef ecosystem off northeastern Australia, made of thousands of reefs and islands whose living corals, seagrass, mangroves, animals, people, and climate pressures make it one of Earth's most important marine systems.
The Grand Canyon is a vast canyon carved by the Colorado River in northern Arizona, exposing layered rocks, deep geologic time, changing river systems, and the complex relationship between landscape, people, science, and preservation.
Earthquakes happen when built-up stress in rock is suddenly released, usually along faults in Earth?s crust. They can shake buildings, rupture roads, trigger landslides and tsunamis, reveal how tectonic plates move, and remind communities why preparation, building design, monitoring, and clear public warnings matter.
Coral reefs are living marine structures built mainly by colonies of tiny coral animals, supporting exceptionally diverse ecosystems while protecting coasts, sustaining fisheries and tourism, and facing severe pressure from warming, pollution, disease, and overuse.
Climate change is the long-term shift in Earth's temperature, rainfall, oceans, ice, ecosystems, and extreme weather patterns, driven today mainly by human greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels, land use, agriculture, and industry.
The carbon cycle is the movement and storage of carbon through the atmosphere, oceans, rocks, soils, living organisms, and human systems, linking life, climate, geology, energy, and the chemistry of Earth.