Exam 15: The Work of Wind and Deserts

Wind velocities are greater than water velocities, and therefore, wind can carry more sediment than water.

Sand covers approximately 75 percent of the world's deserts.

Imagine you are a geologist looking at a rock column. Which line of evidence would most strongly indicate that these rocks formed in a desert?

What are windblown deposits of silt and clay called?

Wind erosion occurs by ____.

Would it be surprising to find a desert at the North and South Poles, with latitudes of +90 and -90 degrees respectively? Why or why not?

What size of particle is usually the first to be set in motion by wind?

What are elongated, streamlined rock ridges in wind-dominated erosional areas called?

Thick deposits of loess form longitudinal desert dunes.

All dunes originate in desert conditions.

Alluvial fan sediment is deposited by flashflood, sheetflow, mudflow, and debris flow.

Explain the ways in which alluvial fans and deltas are similar.

What is an isolated mountain that rises from the flat plain of a desert called?

Which statement about deserts is most accurate?

The size, shape, and arrangement of dunes is affected by many factors, two of which are ____ and ____.

Dunes that form when vegetation cover is broken by deflation and the dune tips point upwind are ____.

A broad alluvial apron formed by the coalescence of alluvial fans is called a(n)____.

Plants have adapted to deserts by ____.

The major topographic features of western United States deserts formed during the Pleistocene Epoch.

The drainage characteristic of most deserts, in which streams dry up and do not have enough water to become integrated and reach outside their drainage areas, is called ____________________ drainage.