Download Exam #2 - MSU Billings

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Geology Exam II – Fall, 2008
(Multiple choice – 2 pts each)
1. Dip and strike measurements are used to describe the orientation of
a. bedding planes.
b. joints.
c. faults.
d. planar surfaces in metamorphic rocks.
e. all of the above
2. Tight folds are commonly associated with
a. strike-slip faults.
b. bedding plane faults.
c. thrust faults.
d. normal faults.
e. complex faults.
3. Lateral offset in drainage lines is commonly associated with
a. normal faults.
b. reverse faults.
c. thrust faults.
d. strike-slip faults.
4. The formation of the Basin and Range province of the western United States is believed to be the
result of
a. horizontal compression caused by plate collision.
b. tensional forces.
c. lateral motion caused by plate rotation.
d. cracking of the Earth's crust caused by tidal forces.
e. fracture system caused by igneous intrusions at a shallow level.
5. Continental collision is commonly marked by
a. the formation of large fold belts.
b. the development of normal faults.
c. thrust sheets.
d. all of the above
e. only A and C
6. An unconformity is
a. a sedimentary unit.
b. a period of deposition.
c. a buried erosional surface.
d. a type of fold.
e. a type of fault.
7. What global tectonic features are found where horsts and grabens are common?
a. rift valleys
b. transform plate boundaries
c. folded mountain belts related to convergent boundaries
d. mantle plumes
e. none of the above
8. Which statement is characteristic of an eroded dome?
a. the oldest rocks are found around the rim of the structure
b. the oldest rocks are found in the middle and of the structure
9. Which statement is characteristic of an eroded dome?
a. the beds dip inward toward the center of the structure.
b. the beds dip away from the center of the structure.
10. What is meant by ‘Uniformitarianism’?
a. The past is the key to the present
b. Physical laws of the Universe are the same today as they were in the past
c. All nature tends to move toward a Uniform condition, i.e. Equilibrium
d. The present geologic landscape was created in a series of catastrophic Extinction events
e. Both A and B are correct
11. What is the Principle of cross-cutting relationships?
a. The oldest rocks are on the bottom
b. The youngest rocks are on the bottom
c. Intrusions or faults are younger than the rocks they cross
d. Intrusions or faults are older than the rocks they cross
e. None of the above
12. What is the difference between relative and absolute ages?
a. Absolute ages are very accurate; relative ages are not
b. Relative ages are very accurate; absolute ages are not
c. Absolute ages are in years; relative ages only tell whether one rock is older or younger than another
d. The geologic landscape was created in a series of catastrophic Extinctions which are clearly dated
13. What does Phanerozoic mean in Greek?
a. Old life
b. Middle life
c. Modern life
d. Visible life
e. Invisible life
14. Why do we have such good dates on many fossil beds of the Western United States?
a. Because we know how old the fossils are
b. Because terrestrial sedimentary rocks such as those formed in rivers, contain many dinosaur species,
which only existed before 65 million years ago
c. Because fossil-rich beds contain many thin volcanic beds that erupted about every 600,000 years
d. Because fossil-rich beds contain many thin volcanic beds containing minerals that can be dated using
radiometric methods
e. Both C and D are correct
15. How much of geologic time is encompassed by the Precambrian? In other words, what
percentage of the Earth’s total lifespan took place before the worldwide explosion of large fossils?
a. 25%
b. 50%
c. 70%
d. 80%
16. What are tributaries?
a. The divides that define a drainage basin
b. All of the rivers and streams that drain into the main trunk of a river
c. Splays and avulsions that contribute to the formation of a delta
d. Depositional bars on the outside bend of a river
e. Both B and C
17. What happened to the fertility of the Nile Delta and Nile River floodplains after the Aswan Dam
was built in 1970?
a. It became less fertile because floods no longer delivered rich organic matter to the floodplain
b. It became more fertile because floods no longer eroded rich soil from the floodplain
c. It became less fertile because lower flow levels allowed encroachment of salty sea water
d. It became more fertile because without annual flooding farmers could put fertilizer on the soil earlier in
the growing season
e. Both B and D are correct
18. What is a point bar?
a. A bar that is pointy shaped
b. A sand bar formed in the delta at the mouth of a river
c. A gravel bar formed in a braided stream
d. A sand bar that forms on the inside corner of a meandering stream
e. None of the above
19. What is a floodplain?
a. The main part of the channel that is eroded, i.e. plained, during floods
b. The flat area of the river valley outside of the natural levees
c. The portion of the river valley that is covered by water during floods
d. All of the above
e. Both B and C are correct
20. What is permeability?
a. A measurement of viscosity for a given hydrostatic pressure
b. The percentage of the rock that has open space to hold water
c. The capacity of a rock to transmit fluid
d. The flow rate within an aquifer
e. Both B and C are correct
21. What is the water table?
a. The level in the ground below which the soil or rock is saturated
b. The level in the ground below the confining beds of an aquifer
c. The level in the ground where potable water may first be found
d. The level in the ground that feeds springs
22. What type of rock/sediment most commonly forms aquifers in Montana? (See the lecture)
a. Fractured volcanic rock
b. Fractured and dissolved limestone caverns
c. Porous sandstones
d. Unconsolidated sediments, i.e. gravels and sands
e. Rivers such as the Yellowstone
23. In what type of rock are caves most likely to form?
a. Fractured volcanic rocks
b. Limestones
c. Pumice and other porous volcanic rocks
d. Sandstones
24. How do stalactites and stalagmites form?
a. They are mineralized replacements of buried fossils such as trees
b. Hydrothermal hot springs precipitate the minerals as the hot water cools
c. They are what is left over after the rest of the limestone forming the cave has dissolved
d. Dissolved minerals, such as calcite, precipitate as the water dripping from the ceiling evaporates
25. What are the two types of glaciers?
a. Temporary and Permanent
b. Flowing and Non-flowing
c. Continental and Valley (Mountain)
d. High latitude and low latitude
e. Continental and Lacustrine
26. What is a surging glacier?
a. A glacier that is growing in size very rapidly
b. A glacier that moves very rapidly downhill
c. A glacier that erodes the underlying surface much more rapidly than most glaciers
d. A glacier that is melting very rapidly
e. Both A and B are correct
27. What features are characteristic of glacial erosion?
a. moraines, arêtes, V-shaped valleys, hanging valleys, till, kettles, glacial erratics, loess
b. cirques, arêtes, U-shaped valleys, hanging valleys, striations
c. Moraines, U-shaped valleys, till, drumlins, eskers, varves, striations, loess
d. moraines, till, drumlins, eskers, varves, glacial erratics, loess
28. How do Ice Ages affect sea levels?
a. Sea level rises because the weather is cooler and wetter
b. Sea level drops because the weather is colder and drier
c. Sea level rises because ice sheets calve Ice bergs from surging glaciers which then melt
d. Sea level drops because water is tied up in ice sheets instead of in the ocean
29. When was the Pleistocene Epoch?
a. Before 540 million years ago
b. From 65 million years ago to the present
c. From about 1.8 Million years ago to 10,000 years before the present
d. From 10,000 years ago to the present
30. What produced the giant ripple marks and deposits of sediment seen in the Scablands?
a. An large and ancient river formed from thousands of years of melting of the Laurentide Ice Sheet
b. It is an ancient beach from when Pacific was farther inland during the last major transgression
c. A massive and short lasting flood produced when the ice damming glacial Lake Missoula melted
d. Lake (pluvial) deposits from glacial Lake Missoula
e. Winds at the end of the last Ice Age that formed large dunes of loess
31. What are Milankovitch Cycles?
a. Cyclical variations in the Earth’s orbital parameters
b. Cyclical variations in the Earth’s surface temperature
c. Cyclical variations in the Earth’s concentrations of greenhouse gases
d. Cyclical variations in the Earth’s Glacial/Interglacial conditions
e. Both A and D are correct
32. Where does most tectonic activity occur?
a. At the boundaries between crustal plates
b. In mountain ranges
c. At hot spots
d. At seamounts and volcanoes
33. What was the paleontological evidence for continental drift?
a. All of the continents had the same plants and animals
b. The climates of het continents were similar near the Equator
c. Distinctly different fossils were found on all continents
d. Similar fossils were found on continents which are now separated, e.g. a fern (Glossopteris), a freshwater reptile (Mesosaurus and a mammal-like reptile (Lystrosaurus)
34. Approximately how old is the oldest sediment found on the ocean floor?
a. No older than 10 million years old
b. No older than 65 million years old
c. No older than 100 million years old
d. No older than 200 million years old
35. What are the three types of plate boundaries?
a. Normal, Reverse and Transform
b. Continental, Oceanic and Hot Spot
c. Felsic, Intermediate and Mafic
d.Divergent, Convergent and Transform
36. Of what are the fold belts of the Appalachian Mtns of eastern N. America a surface expression?
a. An accreted spreading ridge, i.e., an Ophiolite Suite
b. An ancient convergent plate boundary
c. An ancient passive margin
d. An ancient strike-slip fault, like The San Andreas Fault
37. On what major island does the Mid-Atlantic Ridge appear above the surface of the ocean?
a. Iceland
b. Greenland
c. Antarctica
d. Baffin Island
e. Great Britain
38. What is happening to lithospheric plates at divergent plate boundaries?
a. Plates are colliding
b. Plates are slipping beneath one another
c. Plates are moving apart
d. Mantle convection brings magma to the surface, where it cools; creating new lithospheric crust
e. Both C and D are correct
39. What are ophiolites?
a. Mantle, Moho and Crust
b. The sequence of rocks that forms oceanic crust
c. Rocks created in subduction zones
d. Biogenic oozes characteristic of sediments at Ridge Spreading Zones
40. What is meant by ‘hydrothermal alteration’?
a. Precipitation of evaporites at high temperature in Rifting Margins
b. Local metamorphism due tensional forces
c. Regional alteration of rocks due to subduction
d. Chemical and mineral alteration of rocks due to the flow of hot seawater through the crust
41. What types of magmas are formed in subduction zones?
a. Basaltic and ultramafic
b. Andesitic and Rhyolitic
c. Ophiolite Suites
d. Metamorphic and Granitic
e. Both A and C are correct
42. What are plutons?
a. a sequence of rocks formed in oceanic divergent zones
b. Regional metamorphic suites found in convergent zones
c. large magma bodies that cool beneath the Earth’s surface
d. large magma bodies typically found in many convergent zones
e. Both C and D are correct
43. This photograph shows deformation of a glass rod. What type of behavior is illustrated?
a. hot solids are more likely to be brittle
b. hot solids are more likely to be viscous
c. hot solids are more likely to be ductile
d. hot solids are more likely to be foliated
e. hot solids are more likely to be laminar
44. When were the Rocky Mountains ‘deformed’, i.e. folded an faulted into mountains?
a. About 1.2 Million years ago
b. About 16 Million years ago
c. During the Late Mesozoic-Early Tertiary
d. During the Paleozoic Era
e. About 1.4 Billion years ago
45. When were the Appalachian Mountains deformed, i.e. folded an faulted into mountains?
a. About 1.2 Million years ago
b. About 16 Million years ago
c. During the Late Mesozoic-Early Tertiary
d. During the Paleozoic Era
e. About 1.4 Billion years ago
46. What is the range of velocities measured for crustal plates?
a. ~1 to 15 centimeters/year
b. ~1 to 15 inches/year
c. ~1 to 15 meters/year
d. ~1 to 15 yards/year
e. ~1 to 15 centimeters/million years
47. What name did Wegner give to the ‘original’ large land mass?
a. Gaia
b. Gondwanaland
c. Pangaea
d. Laurasia
e. Urwelt
48. What was the average temperature throughout much of the Earth’s history and what is the
average temperature today?
a. average T throughout history = 22°C; average T today = 14°C
b. average T throughout history = 14°C; average T today = 22°C
c. average T throughout history = 32°C; average T today = 59°C
d. average T throughout history = 0°F; average T today = 20°F
e. Both C and D are correct
49. How much of the Earth’s ice is contained in the continental glacier on the Antarctica?
a. ~10%
b. ~20%
c. ~40%
d. ~75%
e. > 90%
50. What controls the velocity of groundwater flow?
a. Average annual rainfall
b. Average annual temperature
c. Porosity, hydraulic conductivity and hydraulic head
d. Permeability, hydraulic conductivity and hydraulic head
e. Rates of irrigation
51. What is an oxbow lake?
a. a slightly curved lake in the floodplain formed from an abandoned meander
b. a lake formed in a cirque
c. a brackish (slightly salty) lake
d. a lake formed in arid environments and in which evaporites precipitate, e.g. The Great Salt Lake
e. A lake formed when a large block of glacial ice melts
52. What is the impact of urbanization on surface runoff and infiltration?
a. Runoff has slowed down due to manmade drainage tunnels and sewage systems
b. Runoff has increased because cities form heat islands and cause local rainstorms
c. Runoff has decreased because of the decreased hydraulic conductivity of landfill
d. Runoff has increased because roads, parking lots and buildings cover much of the ground and prevent
infiltration
e. There has been little change in runoff and infiltration
53. What is meant by the term ‘Half-Life?
a. the time it takes for a radiogenic isotope to decay to half of its starting abundance
b. the time it takes for a stable isotope to decay to half of its starting abundance
c. half the time it takes for the radiogenic isotope to completely disappear
d. half the time it takes for the stable isotope to completely disappear
e. Both A and C are correct
54. What is a Geologic column?
a. a diagram representing divisions of geologic time and the rock units formed
b. a cooling Rhyolitic magma that forms large rock columns, e.g. Devils Tower
c. a map of the geologic Formations with lithologic descriptions
d. a map of the geologic Formations with strike and dip markers
e. a map of the geologic Formations with recent faults and earthquakes marked
55. What is the Principle of Superposition?
a. Rocks that cross other rocks are younger than the rocks they cross
b. Rocks that are folded are older than flat-lying strata
c. rocks are originally laid down in horizontal layers
d. the youngest rocks are on the bottom
e. the oldest rocks are on the bottom
56. Which of the following mountain ranges were formed by continent-continent collision?
a. The Himalayas, Tibetan Plateau and the Urals
b. The Andes, the Cascades, the Rocky Mountains
c. Hawaiian Islands, Yellowstone Caldera, Kamchatka Peninsula, Aleutian Archipelago
d. Iceland, the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, and the Tonga Islands
e. The Rocky Mountains of northwest Montana and the Appalachians
57. What happens to seawater at a Divergent plate boundary and what does it produce?
a. Seawater dehydrates causing partial melting of the mantle
b. Seawater is carried down with the subducted plate producing water vapor
c. seawater forms gas, causing the magma to erupt explosively
d. seawater is released to the ocean, producing biogenic oozes
e. seawater percolates through the newly formed oceanic crust resulting in hydrothermal alteration of the
crust
58. What are three examples of folded mountain belts?
a. the San Andreas Fault, the Basin and Range Province, and the Snake River Basalts
b. The Andes, the Cascades, the Rocky Mountains
c. Hawaiian Islands, Yellowstone Caldera, Kamchatka Peninsula, Aleutian Archipelago
d. Iceland, the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, and the Tonga Islands
e. The Rocky Mountains of northwest Montana and the Appalachians
59. Which of the following are examples of violent eruptions at convergent plate boundaries?
a. the Yellowstone Caldera, the Ontong-Java Plateau and the Flood Basalts of the Columbia
b. the San Andreas Fault, the Basin and Range Province, and the Snake River Basalts
c. Mauna Loa, Kilauea, and Mount Vesuvius
d. Mount Vesuvius, Krakatau, Mount Pelée, and Mount St. Helens
e. Both C and D are correct
60. How many calderas form the Yellowstone?
a. 1
b. 2
c. 3
d. 6
Short Answer Section
1. In the space below, please draw and label the major features found in a convergent OceanicContinental boundary. (15)
On this diagram clearly indicate where you would expect to find High Pressure; Low Temperature
metamorphism, Low Pressure; High Temperature metamorphism, and High Pressure; High
Temperature metamorphism. (3)
2. (4) If you knew that there was a confined aquifer about 75 feet down and decided to drill a well,
would you need to pump it or would it flow freely. What would determine the answer to this
question?
3. (3) What is the difference between an Ice Age and a Glacial Epoch?
4. (4)You find a volcanic dike cross-cutting a sedimentary layer that you are studying. Minerals in the
dike are dated at 16 million years old. Can this be used to date the sedimentary layer? Be specific
in your answer. Don’t just answer yes or no.
5. (6) What is the relationship between the Snake River Plain and Yellowstone?