302 articles
Carbon sink
A carbon sink, or CO2 sink, is any process that removes carbon dioxide or another greenhouse gas from the atmosphere, mainly the ocean and land biosphere.
Cartography
Cartography, also known as map making or cartology, is the art, science, and technology of making and using maps, practiced since ancient Babylonian clay tablets.
Cation-exchange capacity
Cation-exchange capacity (CEC) is a soil science measure of the negatively charged sites on soil and clay surfaces that reversibly hold nutrient cations such as calcium, magnesium, and potassium.
CENTURY model
The CENTURY model, developed at Colorado State University's Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory, simulates carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, and sulfur dynamics in plant-soil systems on a monthly time step.
Chandler wobble
The Chandler wobble is a free nutation of the Earth's rotation axis with a period of about 433 to 435 days, discovered by Seth Carlo Chandler in 1891.
Chargeability
Chargeability is a dimensionless measure of how strongly a rock or soil stores electric charge reversibly, the principal parameter of the induced polarization geophysical method.
Chernozems
Chernozems, from the Russian for black earth (чёрнозем), are a WRB Reference Soil Group of deep steppe soils with a thick, dark, humus-rich surface horizon over lime-accumulating material.
China Earthquake Networks Center
The China Earthquake Networks Center (中国地震台网中心) is the national institution of the China Earthquake Administration that operates China's seismic monitoring networks and issues rapid earthquake reports and early warnings.
Circles of latitude between the 25th parallel north and the 30th parallel north
The circles of latitude between the 25th parallel north and the 30th parallel north are five whole-degree parallels from 25°N to 29°N, just north of the Tropic of Cancer.
Circles of latitude between the 65th parallel north and the 70th parallel north
The circles of latitude between the 65th and 70th parallels north are six whole-degree parallels that span the subarctic-to-Arctic transition and contain the Arctic Circle at 66°34′ N.
Clay
Clay is a fine-grained earthy material made of layered hydrous silicate minerals, also defined by particle size below 2 micrometers; it forms by weathering near the Earth's surface.
Coda wave interferometry
Coda wave interferometry is a seismological and ultrasonic method, introduced in 2002, that detects small velocity changes by comparing multiply scattered coda waves, used to monitor volcanoes and faults.
Controlled-source electromagnetics
Controlled-source electromagnetics (CSEM) is a geophysical exploration method that maps subsurface resistivity using a controlled low-frequency source, used commercially to detect offshore oil and gas reservoirs.
Copernicus Land Motion service
The Copernicus Land Motion service, known as the European Ground Motion Service (EGMS), uses Sentinel-1 radar data to detect and measure ground movement across Europe with millimeter precision.
Core formation
Core formation is the differentiation process in which molten iron sinks through a rocky planet's or asteroid's silicate interior to form a dense metallic core, fixing the core and mantle compositions seen today.
Core–mantle interaction
Core–mantle interaction is the exchange of heat, momentum, and chemical constituents between Earth's liquid iron outer core and silicate mantle across a boundary about 2,900 km deep.
D″ layer
The D″ layer is the lowermost 200 to 300 km of Earth's mantle, lying directly above the core-mantle boundary at about 2,900 km depth and seismically distinct from the lower mantle.
Desertification
Desertification, or desertization, is land degradation in arid, semi-arid, and dry sub-humid areas driven by climate change and human activities like overgrazing and deforestation, formalized in the 1994 UNCCD.
Differential interferometric SAR
Differential interferometric SAR (DInSAR) is a radar remote-sensing technique comparing SAR images from repeated satellite passes to measure ground deformation from earthquakes, volcanoes, and subsidence with millimeter precision.
Differential interferometry
Differential interferometry (DInSAR) is a satellite radar remote-sensing method that compares SAR images acquired at different times to measure millimeter-scale ground deformation from earthquakes, volcanoes, landslides, and subsidence.
Diffraction tomography
Diffraction tomography is an inverse-scattering imaging method that reconstructs the internal structure of weakly scattering objects from diffracted waves, unlike ray-based tomography, with applications in geophysics, breast ultrasound, and cell imaging.
Digital elevation model
A digital elevation model (DEM) is a digital representation of the Earth's bare-ground topographic surface, excluding trees and buildings, used in flood modeling, road design, and topographic mapping.
Digital soil mapping
Digital soil mapping (DSM) is a geospatial method that predicts soil properties or classes across a landscape by fitting quantitative relationships between soil observations and environmental data layers.
Downward continuation
Downward continuation is a geophysical processing technique that projects potential field data, such as gravity or magnetic anomalies, to a level closer to its sources, enhancing shallow features.
Dynamic global vegetation model
A dynamic global vegetation model (DGVM) is a process-based ecosystem model simulating vegetation dynamics and carbon, water, and energy fluxes between land and atmosphere, used in climate modeling.
Dynamic rupture simulation
Dynamic rupture simulation is a computational seismology method that numerically models spontaneous earthquake fault rupture by solving for stress, friction, and wave propagation, unlike kinematic models.
Dynamo model
A dynamo model is a mathematical and numerical description of how convecting, electrically conducting fluid in a planetary core or star generates and sustains a magnetic field.
Earth science
Earth science, also called geoscience, is the study of the Earth, its solid interior, oceans, atmosphere, and life, covering geology, meteorology, oceanography, and astronomy, unified by plate tectonics.
Earth tide
The Earth tide, or solid Earth tide, is the elastic deformation of the solid Earth, up to about 10 cm, caused by the gravity of the Moon and Sun.
Earth's energy budget
Earth's energy budget, also called Earth's energy balance, is the accounting of solar energy entering Earth and radiation leaving it, measured in watts per square meter.