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Earth sciences

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Salar de Maricunga

Salar de Maricunga is a high-altitude salt flat in the Atacama Region of northern Chile, with Chile's second-highest lithium brine concentration after the Salar de Atacama.

Salinas River (California)

The Salinas River is the longest river of California's central coast, flowing about 152 miles through the Salinas Valley to Monterey Bay and recharging the aquifer beneath one of America's most productive farm regions.

Saline water

Saline water, also known as salt water, contains dissolved salts, mostly sodium chloride, in amounts too high for drinking or irrigation; ocean water is about 3.5 percent salt.

Salinity

Salinity is the content of dissolved salts in seawater, historically in grams per kilogram and today measured through conductivity-based scales; full-strength seawater sits at about 35.

Salinometer

A salinometer is an instrument that determines the salinity of a water sample by measuring its electrical conductivity, used widely in oceanography and in marine engineering.

Salobo

Salobo is a large copper-gold mine in the Carajás Mineral Province, Pará, northern Brazil, owned by Vale. It is Brazil's largest copper deposit, producing from an open pit since 2012.

Salt dome

A salt dome, also called a salt diapir, is a mass of rock salt that rises buoyantly from a buried salt bed into overlying sediments.

Salt lake

A salt lake, also called a saline or brine lake, is a closed-basin lake whose water exceeds about 3 g/L dissolved salt, typically forming in arid basins where evaporation concentrates minerals.

Salt tectonics

Salt tectonics is the study of deformation of rock involving salt or other evaporites, which flow because they are weaker and less dense than surrounding sediments.

Salt weathering

Salt weathering is the physical breakdown of rock, stone, and masonry by soluble salts, through crystallization, hydration, and thermal expansion, damaging deserts, coasts, monuments, and roads.

Saltation (geology)

Saltation is the transport of sediment particles by wind or water in short hops or skips, one of the three principal modes of wind sediment transport.

Saltwater intrusion

Saltwater intrusion is the movement of saline water into freshwater aquifers, most often caused by coastal groundwater pumping; it is the most common water-quality problem in coastal-plain aquifers.

Sam Champion

Sam Champion, also known as Samuel James Champion, is an American television weather presenter best known as ABC's Good Morning America weather anchor from 2006 to 2013.

Samarco

Samarco is a privately held Brazilian mining company, owned equally by Vale and BHP, producing iron ore pellets from Minas Gerais to an Espírito Santo port since 1977.

SAMREC Code

The SAMREC Code is the South African standard for public reporting of exploration results, mineral resources, and mineral reserves, mandatory for companies listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange.

Samsari Volcanic Center

Samsari Volcanic Center (Abul-Samsari ridge) is a Quaternary volcanic field of over 20 volcanoes in the Javakheti Highland, southern Georgia, 90 km WSW of Tbilisi; youngest activity under 30 ka at Tavkvetili, no confirmed Holocene eruptions.

San Andreas Fault

The San Andreas Fault is the roughly 1,200-kilometer boundary in California where the Pacific Plate slides northwest past the North American Plate, from the Salton Sea to Cape Mendocino.

San Dimas mine

The San Dimas mine is an underground silver and gold mine near Tayoltita on the Durango–Sinaloa border in Mexico, mined since 1757 and owned by First Majestic Silver.

San Francisco volcanic field

The San Francisco volcanic field is a volcanic area in northern Arizona near Flagstaff with more than 600 volcanoes, most recently erupting at Sunset Crater around 1085.

Sand

Sand is granular material of mineral particles between 0.062 and 2 mm across, defined by grain size rather than composition, with quartz dominant in most sands.

Sand Mountain Field

Sand Mountain Field (volcano 322040) is a monogenetic volcanic field of 23 basaltic cinder cones in the central Oregon Cascades NW of Mount Washington, erupting mainly about 2,950 years ago, with phreatomagmatic tephra and lava-dammed lakes.

Sandstone

Sandstone is a clastic sedimentary rock of sand-sized grains cemented together, typically rich in quartz; it stores groundwater and over 60 percent of giant oil fields.

Sanganguey

Sangangüey (Volcán Sangangüey) is a 2,340 m eroded andesitic-dacitic stratovolcano in Nayarit, Mexico, highest of the Tepic-Zacoalco graben, with 45 flank cinder cones and no confirmed historical eruptions.

Sangaredi mine

The Sangaredi mine is an open-pit bauxite mine in Guinea's Boké region, operating since 1973 as the principal site of Compagnie des Bauxites de Guinée.

Sanidine

Sanidine is the high-temperature, structurally disordered polymorph of potassium feldspar, typically found as crystals in quickly cooled volcanic rocks such as rhyolite and trachyte, and prized for argon dating.

Sannine Limestone

The Sannine Limestone, also called the Sannine Formation, is a thick Late Cretaceous limestone formation in Lebanon and one of the country's two main aquifers.

Santa Ana

Santa Ana (Ilamatepec) volcano, El Salvador's highest at 2,381 m, a stratovolcano west of Coatepeque caldera; historic eruptions since 1520, 1722 San Marcelino lava flow, VEI 3 eruption on 1 October 2005.

Santa Ana winds

Santa Ana winds are dry, warm offshore winds of southern California and northern Baja California, blowing from the deserts toward the coast from September to May and driving the region's worst wildfires.

Santa María (volcano)

Santa María, or Volcán Santa María, is an active 3,745 m stratovolcano in western Guatemala, whose 1902 Plinian eruption, Guatemala's largest, has been followed since 1922 by the Santiaguito lava dome.

Santonian

The Santonian is a stage of the Late Cretaceous spanning 85.7 to 83.6 million years ago, between the Coniacian and Campanian, proposed by Henri Coquand in 1857.