GLOSSARY LESSON 2 (GEOGRAPHY)

Temperature: A measure of the warmth or coldness of an object or substance with reference to some standard value.

Oases: a small fertile or green area in a desert region, usually having a spring or well.

Precipitation: the act of precipitating; state of being precipitated.

Settlement: the act or state of settling or the state of being settled.

Livestock: the horses, cattle, sheep, and other useful animals kept or raised on a farm or ranch.

Scrub: Chemistry . to remove (impurities or undesirable components) from a gas by chemical means, as sulfur dioxide from smokestack gas or carbon dioxide from exhaled air in life-support packs.

Holm Oak Tree: is a large evergreen oak native to the Mediterranean region

Logging: the process, work, or business of cutting down trees and transporting the logs to sawmills

Deforestation: to divest or clear of forests or trees

Savannah: is a grassland ecosystem characterized by the trees being sufficiently widely spaced so that the canopy does not close

Taiga: the coniferous evergreen forests of subarctic lands, covering vast areas of northern North America and Eurasia.

Tundra: one of the vast, nearly level, treeless plains of the arctic regions of Europe, Asia, and North America.

Jungle: a wild land overgrown with dense vegetation, often nearly impenetrable, especially tropical vegetation or a tropical rain forest.

Desert: a region so arid because of little rainfall that it supports only sparse and widely spaced vegetation or no vegetation at all.

Steppe: an extensive plain, especially one without trees.

Deciduous forest:a type of forest characterized by trees that seasonally shed their leaves .

Evergreen forest: is a forest consisting entirely or mainly of evergreen trees that retain green foliage all year round.

Riparian forest: is a forested area of land adjacent to a body of water such as a river, stream, pond, lake, marshland, estuary, canal, sink or reservoir.

Meadows:a tract of grassland used for pasture or serving as a hayfield.

Grassland:an area, as a prairie, in which the natural vegetation consists largely of perennial grasses, characteristic of subhumid and semiarid climates.

NATURAL DISASTERS:

Climate change:a long-term change in the earth's climate, especially a change due to an increase in the average atmospheric temperature

Greenhouse effect: an atmospheric heating phenomenon, caused by short-wave solar radiation being readily transmitted inward through the earth's atmosphere but longer-wavelength heat radiation less readily transmitted outward, owing to its absorption by atmospheric carbon dioxide, water vapor, methane, and other gases; thus, the rising level of carbon dioxide is viewed with concern.

Atmosphere: the gaseous envelope surrounding the earth

Drought:a period of dry weather, especially a long one that is injurious to crops.

Acid rain: precipitation, as rain, snow, or sleet, containing relatively high concentrations of acid-forming chemicals, as the pollutants from coal smoke, chemical manufacturing, and smelting, that have been released into the atmosphere and combined with water vapor.

Hurricane: a violent, tropical, cyclonic storm of the western North Atlantic, having wind speeds of or in excess of 72 miles per hour (32 m/sec).

Tornado: a localized, violently destructive windstorm occurring over land, especially in the Middle West, and characterized by a long, funnel-shaped cloud extending toward the ground and made visible by condensation and debris.

Tsunami: an unusually large sea wave produced by a seaquake or undersea volcanic eruption.

Sea levels rising: when the sea level is upper

Sandstorm: a windstorm, especially in a desert, that blows along great clouds of sand

Flood: a great flowing or overflowing of water, especially over land not usually submerged.