Geology

This badge demonstrates the earner's ability to describe the field of physical geology including how views of the Earth have evolved over time, the Earth's structure and stages of formation, and how the Earth is part of a solar system.

This badge demonstrates the earner's ability to explain the nature of mountains and the processes that form them including types of mountain belts, stages of development, and the principle of isostasy.

This badge demonstrates the earner's ability to describe the process of rock deformation including causes of deformation, types of deformation, the role that folds, faults, and joints play in deformation, and the measurements used for rock deformation.

This badge demonstrates the earner's ability to describe the characteristics and causes of the Earth's dry lands including the stages of landscape evolution, wind erosion, and the formation and movement of dunes.

This badge demonstrates the earner's ability to describe the ocean floor including techniques used to map the ocean floor, the features of the deep-ocean basin, the anatomy of the oceanic ridge, the nature of oceanic crust, continental rifting, and the destruction of the oceanic lithosphere.

This badge demonstrates the earner's ability to describe the Earth's interior structure including how it acquired this structure, the layers of the interior, the temperature of the interior, and methods of measuring and probing the interior.

This badge demonstrates the earner's ability to describe earthquakes including causes of earthquakes, basic types of faults, the major earthquake belts, seismic waves, intensity scales, magnitude scales, the destruction caused by an earthquake, and the methods used to predict and forecast earthquakes.

This badge demonstrates the earner's ability to explain the differences between renewable and nonrenewable resources including fossil fuels and US energy consumption, sources of energy, production of mineral deposits, oil sands, oil shale, gas hydrates, igneous and metamorphic processes, and nonmetallic mineral resources.

This badge demonstrates the earner's ability to describe the geologic time scale including creating a time scale, the four basic time units, the principles of numeric and relative dating, types of fossils, and radioactive decay.

This badge demonstrates the earner's ability to describe glaciers including types of glaciers, characteristics of glaciers, the locations of glaciers, how glaciers move, the process of glacial erosion, features created by glaciers, types of glacial drift, the development of glacial theory, and the causes of the ice age.

This badge demonstrates the earner's ability to describe the relationship between climate change and geology including detecting climate change, the process of climate change, natural causes of climate change, how humans influence climate change, and the consequences of global warming.

This badge demonstrates the earner's ability to explain the importance of groundwater including distribution channels, the water table, factors that influence storage and movement, wells, springs, geysers, and environmental problems.

This badge demonstrates the earner's ability to describe the characteristics and composition of magma including the formation process, the four basic igneous compositions, six major igneous textures, types of igneous rocks, and intrusive igneous structures.

This badge demonstrates the earner's ability to explain the importance of mass wasting including the processes of mass wasting, controls and triggers, results of mass wasting, the role of mass wasting in landforms, and the differences between rapid forms and slow movements in mass wasting.

This badge demonstrates the earner's ability to describe the characteristics and classifications of the Earth's minerals and how they relate to atoms, ionic bonds, covalent bonds, metallic bonds, rocks, and silicate and non-silicate minerals.

This badge demonstrates the earner's ability to describe the process of metamorphism including the environments that produce metamorphic rocks, metamorphic zones, drivers of metamorphism, types of metamorphic rocks, and the metamorphic grade of a rock.

This badge demonstrates the earner's ability to explain the formation and evolution of the bodies in the Earth's solar system including the Earth's moon, terrestrial planets, Jovian planets, small solar system bodies, the characteristics that make the Earth unique among the planets, how oceans and the atmosphere have formed and evolved, the formation of the continental crust, major geologic events in the Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and Cenozoic eras, and the origins of life and early organisms.

This badge demonstrates the earner's ability to explain the Theory of Plate Tectonics including a description of the Earth's major plates, types of plate boundaries, locations of plate boundaries, plate-mantle convection, how to measure plate motion, and its relationship to the Continental Drift Hypothesis.

This badge demonstrates the earner's ability to explain the nature of river systems including the hydrologic cycle, the types of river channels, factors that produce river channels, how running water influences the landscape, and the impact of floods.

This badge demonstrates the earner's ability to explain the origin of sedimentary rocks including the rock cycle, the formation process, the features, categories, and classifications of sedimentary rocks, detrital rocks, and the carbon cycle.