1 minute read
The Earth's Spheres
by AudioLearn
Figure 3A.
The eon of the Proterozoic was once called "Precambrian" but is now just a portion of what we now call the entire time before the Cambrian boundary. This period was itself divided into three eras, called the Neo-, Meso-, and Paleo-proterozoic eras. These correspond to the Precambrian Z, Y, and X rock strata in North America, respectively.
Advertisement
THE EARTH'S SPHERES
You have probably heard of the spheres of our atmosphere – like the stratosphere, etcetera. The earth itself is part of that sphere system; this means that the ground itself and parts beneath it are included in these spheres. Honestly, you need all the spheres around earth to work together for Earth's sustainability as a planet.
The lithosphere is the "rock" part of the earth. This includes both the interior rocky parts and the rocky surface of earth. The sphere outside of that is the biosphere, which
is where everything lives. Alongside of that sphere is the hydrosphere. This is where the water is around earth. Then we have the atmosphere, which has its own set of gases and other features. Lastly, there is the cryosphere, which are the poles and all the ice in it. You can imagine that these interact together in geology. Figure 4 shows you most of these spheres:
Figure 4.
The water around earth is enormous. This water can be either salinized or nonsalinized. Salinized water is water that is salty; this makes up about 96.5 percent of the total water on earth. Water also makes up part of the atmosphere and the cryosphere as well. The cryosphere doesn't seem huge, but it actually locks up about 75 percent of all the fresh water around this planet. You have to think of these spheres in geology.
Water in the atmosphere rains onto rocky surfaces, contributing to erosion and other types of weathering, depending on the situation. Acid rain as you know, is a situation where rainfall causes chemical changes in rocks. Rivers and lakes have their own kind of weathering; waves in the ocean help alter sand and the rocks near the shoreline. Ice
